By selecting the 'Susbcribe & Save' option you are enrolling in an auto-renewing subscription of Zookal Study Premium. Cancel at anytime.
Auto-Renewal
Your Zookal Study Premium subscription will be renewed each month until you cancel. You consent to Zookal automatically charging your payment method on file $19.99 each month after 1st month free period until you cancel.
How to Cancel
You can cancel your subscription anytime by visiting Manage account page, clicking "Manage subscription" and completing the steps to cancel. Cancellations take effect at the end of the 1st month free period (if applicable) or at the end of the current billing cycle in which your request to cancel was received. Subscription fees are not refundable.
Zookal Study Premium Monthly Subscription Includes:
Ability to post up to ten (10) questions per month.
20% off your textbooks order and free standard shipping whenever you shop online at
textbooks.zookal.com.au
Unused monthly subscription benefits have no cash value, are not transferable, and expire at the end of each month. This means that subscription benefits do not roll over to or accumulate for use in subsequent months.
Payment Methods
Afterpay and Zip Pay will not be available for purchases with Zookal Study Premium subscription added to bag.
$1.00 preauthorisation
You may see a $1.00 preauthorisation by your bank which will disappear from your statement in a few business days..
Email communications
By adding Zookal Study Premium, you agree to receive email communications from Zookal.
Population, Production, and Power in the Preindustrial West
Published
1st February 2005
Related course codes
Population, Production, and Power in the Preindustrial West
The Field and the Forge offers a new approach to the pre-industrial past in Europe and the Mediterranean basin from the Roman Republic to the fall of Napoleon. Based on an original synthesis of 'structural' economic and demographic history with traditionally 'event driven' political and military history, it takes as its starting point E. A. Wrigley's concept of 'organic economies' and their reliance on the land for energy and raw materials. The opening
section considers the ensuing constraints on productivity, transportation, and the spatial organization of the economy. The second section analyses the constraints imposed by muscle-powered military technology and
by the organic economy on the tactical, operational, and strategic use of armed force, and the consequences of the spread of firearms in recorded history's first energy revolution. This is followed by an analysis of the military and economic constraints on the political integration of space through the formation of geographically extensive political units, and the volume concludes with a section on the demographic and economic consequences of the investment of manpower and resources in war.
Existing accounts of organic economies emphasize their restricted potential to support economic and political development, but this volume also considers why so much potential
remained unrealized. Endemic mass poverty curtailed demand, limiting incentives for investment and innovation, and keeping output growth below what was technologically possible. Resource shortages prevented rulers from establishing a fiscal apparatus capable of appropriating such resources as were physically available. But economic inefficiency also created a pool of under-utilized resources that could potentially be mobilized in pursuit of political power. The volume gives an innovative
account of this potential - and why it was realized in the ancient world rather than the medieval west - together with a new analysis of the gunpowder revolution and the inability of rulers to meet the
consequential costs within the confines of an organic economy.