The Danish revolution, 1500-1800
Subtitle: an ecohistorical interpretation
By: Thorkild Kjærgaard ; translated by David Hohnen.
Series: Studies in environment and history
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]; New York, NY, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 314
Subjects: Natural resources -- Denmark -- History.; Conservation of natural resources -- Denmark -- History.; Human ecology -- Denmark -- History.; Environmental policy -- Denmark -- History.
Description: This book tells the story of how a fertile European country, as a result of overpopulation and military armament, overexploited its fields and forests in a nonsustainable fashion. By the eighteenth century Denmark, along with other European countries, found itself in an ecological crisis caused by clear felling of forests, sand drift, floods, inadequate soil fertilization, and cattle disease.

The crisis was overcome by a green biotechnological revolution that changed the whole pattern of agriculture, and by the abandonment of wood as a raw material and source of energy in favour of coal and iron. This development had wide, unexpected consequences for the landscape, patterns of disease, politics, social structure, art, and literature.

The book outlines the background of the present-day ecological crisis, both in the industrial world and in developing countries, and is the first attempt to understand early modern Europe from a consistently ecological viewpoint.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-302) and index.