I think P is far from persuasive that both China and Europe shared
constraints. He stands on firmer ground when it comes to the
English case. The timber famine and the problem of mines filling
with groundwater, as mine shafts were pushed down deeper, were
real enough. (Of course, we have seen that it is too far a stretch to
argue that the fortunate location of coal made the industrial
revolution.) But I think that P makes a very weak argument when it
comes to the agricultural sector. I am not convinced at all that
English agriculture was facing similar limitations, and the fertility of
the soil had reached a limit which it could not transcend using the
old pre-industrial techniques.
For a book that looks at every *quatitative* aspect of the sugar
industry (i.e. British consumption, Caribbean exports, Chinese
consumption, Chinese ritual uses of, prices, calories per day) one
would expect something more about English agriculture than the
paltry statistics that:
i) "English agricultural productivity seems not to have changed
much between 1750 and 1850...per acre and total yields from
arable land remained flat and the threat of decline constant..."
(216).
ii) Thompson estimates that English farm output grew perhaps 50
percent per laborer between 1840 and 1914, but since the number
of laboreres fell, this represented an increase in total output of
perhaps 12 percent in seventy years..." (217)
iii) Britain's own grain and meat output were becoming inadequate,
as indicated first by a sharp rise in the rise of wheat relative to
other products (40 percent between 1760 and 1790..." (217)
iv) "In England...animal herds were...probably increasing; but the
outlook for soil fertility was still far less rosy than is suggested by
some accounts of the 'Agricultural Revolution'...the manure
generated on these new pastures...increased total farm output
(grain plus animal products) but not crop output" (223-24).
One or more irrelevant ones and that's it. Remember this is a
crucial aspect of P's thesis. He has to show that, by 1800,
England had reached severe ecological limitations which it was
lucky to overcome thanks to the importation of land-intensive crops
from the New World (including timber from the North America). He
has to show that there was not Agricultural Revolution in England
prior to the 1850s (though we are left to wonder whether there
might have been substantial changes before 1750 and whether by
1750 productivity could no longer keep pace with population
growth). Which sources does he use to support these statistical
claims? Just three: Ambrosoli (1997); Thompson, (1968, 1989);
and my friend Greg Clark's 1991 article in EHR.
