When I last wrote that
> P successfully meets these difficulties but at the cost of
> considerable confusion,
I may may have misled some into thinking that P does succeed in
showing that both China and Europe were experiencing shared
constraints, when I really meant that P manages to hold that
modern China since the 1500s was not an overpopulated society
which had reached a dead end in the 18th century, and to hold as
well that, by 1800, China was experiencing a Malthusian wall; and
that Europe had an inefficient agrarian sector with underutilized
resources, and that it was also headed towards a wall by 1800.
But I do not think that P demonstrates that 18th century Europe
was headed towards a Malthusian crisis. In fact, in the next few
posts I think I will be able to show, rather persuasively, that 1)
Europe-less England still had ample underutilized resources (as P
acknowledges) for continued *pre-industrial* growth; 2) while
England was facing certain limits, it was overcoming them both in
the short run, by way of an agricultural (pre-industrial) revolution,
and in the long run by way of conscious, systematic, successful
effort to exploit new sources of inorganic energy; 3) China was not
only facing a Malthusian crisis by the 1800s but a stationary state;
4) CHINA ENJOYED A GREATER "ECOLOGICAL WINDFALL"
THAN EUROPE.
