The Change Of Environment And Society In Medieval And Early Modern Western Europe

Did the West Europe in Middle Ages also have environmental problems? Maybe quite a lot of people nowadays are still doubtful to this fact because the productive forces of the West Europe in this period was in underdeveloped condition and the technology fell behind the Eastern countries of this time such as China. Because the appearance of environmental problems was related to Great Industry and then it began to attract worldwide attention after World Warâ…¡.But the facts have proved that in the middle and late period of the Middle Ages and early Modern Times, the West Europe had emerged the environmental problems and it had already had a negative influence on the social ever-development in those days. My thesis is do study the problems. The preface is about the value and meaning of the titles selection, and the domestic and foreign research situation about the field. Now, The Works of environmental history about Western Europe mainly concentrated on the history after the Industrial Revolution, and the achievement of the environmental history before the Industrial Revolution are little. So my works have great value in our times. The first chapter is about the reduction of the forest and the influence to the environment in the medieval Western Europe. At the beginning 11th century ,the economics and society of the West Europe began resurgence, which displayed the development of production ,the rapid increase of population, rejuvenation of cities and so on. Before the Great Crisis in 14th century, the population had increased double or three times and the number of people reached 73 million at largest. People effected the surrounding more and more quickly because of the need to live .Due to the need of industry, agriculture and people daily life, people cut trees in large number, and this caused the well-known "Cultivate Movement" in European history, thus the covering area of forest in Europe declined .In England, for example, the forest-covering rate was about 15 percent in 1086,but it reduced to 10 percent and even to 4 percent at the end of 18th century. Forest diminishment already had serious consequences on the West Europe society .For one thing, the wood was in a poor need and the price rocked because wood used by people reduced sharply and for another thing, the deteriorate of forest also had a negative influence on survival condition such as the worse climate, which esp. caused the worse agricultural ecosystem. The second chapter is about the change of agriculture environment. Based on some scholars'research achievements such as Xu Hao, the character of agricultural condition in the West European countries such as England was that it had plenty of rainfall, and this completely met the need of agriculture productivity and that even surplus the need at times It was quite different from ancient China where large famine resulted from drought. But the famine happened frequently in the West Europe in the late Middle Ages, Why? The reason is the agriculture problems did not lie in water but in the preserve of soil fertility .In West Europe, such as North France and England, soil had the quality of hardness, cohesion, poor permeability and little humus. If it rained too much, the soil was easily washed away and it was very hard to cultivate. The farmers had paid attention to this fact for long that fields needed rest because of poor soil and insufficient fertilizer apply .In order not to make the soil exhausted, it was very vital to change crops frequently as well as a period of nocultivation. The soil in Middle Ages was in an ever-increasing trend when the fertilizer technique didn't have a thorough change. Even though the spread of Norfork System in early Modern Times England couldn't change it. Cutting trees sharpened this trend because the reduce of forest not only reduce the number of home animals as well as the fertilize resources and also it caused soil erosion. The worse agriculture ecosystem situation was the major reason why the famine in Europe happened for all the time from middle and late Middle A...