AGRICULTURE IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

Between 500 and 1500 intensive forms of agriculture developed in many parts of the world, but the vast grasslands of the Eurasian steppe continued to be populated by horse-breeding pastoralist nomads and seminomads.

Riding eastwards and westwards from Central Asia, they frequently raided the lands of permanently settled peoples who increasingly used the plough to cultivate their fields.

Humans already occupied much of the globe by the year 500. Over the next thousand years the spread of intensive food production enabled their numbers to continue rising and a growing area to become more densely occupied. As a result, states and empires and other complex forms of socio-economic organization developed in almost every continent. Foremost in terms of wealth, population and technological achievement was China.

A number of intensive methods of cultivation had been developed before 500. However, the medieval period witnessed the spread of such methods over an ever-expanding area, dramatically increasing outputs in parts of Africa by the 8th century, in eastern Europe by the turn of the millennium, and in some regions of North America throughout the centuries up to 1500. Depending on the environment, different crops were involved: sorghum and millet in Africa, wheat in Europe, and maize, beans and squash amongst others in North America.

At the same time new intensive farming regimes were developed which tackled the problem of sustaining soil fertility in the face of continuous use. In medieval Europe an unprecedented level of central planning evolved, based on the manor. This made possible economies of scale in the use of expensive items (such as draught animals and iron tools) and the implementation of a new strategy for raising production while maintaining fertility - the three-year rotation system. Wheat was grown in one year, beans and other legumes to restore nitrogen to the soil were grown in the next, and the land was allowed to lie fallow in the third.

On the basis of such advances, populations often grew dramatically. In England, for example, the figure of just over one million in about 500 nearly quadrupled to over four million before the Black Death (bubonic plague) took its dreadful toll across Europe in 1347-52, while China's population under the dynasties of the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) increased from just over 50 million in the mid-8th century to over 100 million in the late 13th century.

Food production and populations did not always increase, however. Where a figure seems to have reached its optimum under a precise set of environmental conditions, a period of depletion often followed. In Mesoamerica, for example, the "Maya Collapse" of the 9th century, when the population dropped dramatically from almost five million in the Yucatan Peninsula alone, can at least partly be attributed to degradation of the land caused by intensive agriculture coupled with a reduction in rainfall. In western Europe it is possible that the impact of the Black Death - which reduced the population by between a quarter and a half - may have been intensified because numbers had in places already passed the point of sustainability for the agriculture of the time.

Throughout the medieval period agriculture was the occupation of the vast majority of people. From the 10th century it was made more productive in Europe partly by the introduction of the three-year rotation system and improvements in the design of the plough. However, the pattern of life continued much as it always had, dictated by the seasons.

In "Philip's Atlas of World History" general editor Patrick O'Brien, Octopus Publishing Group, London, 2007, excerpts pp. 58-59. Digitized and adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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