The Economic History Review

Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre‐industrial England

Volume 63 Issue 2
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Pages: 281-314Authors: BRUCE M. S. CAMPBELL
Published online: March 25, 2010DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00492.x

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This article compares chronologies reconstructed from historical records of prices, wages, grain harvests, and population with corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climatic variations derived from dendrochronology and Greenland ice-cores. It demonstrates that in pre-industrial, and especially late medieval, England, short-term environmental shocks and more enduring shifts in environmental conditions (sometimes acting in concert with biological agencies) exercised a powerful influence upon the balance struck between population and available resources via their effects upon the reproduction, health and life expectancy of humans, crops, and livestock. Prevailing socio-economic conditions and institutions, in turn, shaped society’s susceptibility to these environmental shocks and shifts.

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