thanks. It's not relevant to Brenner's thesis (or a critique thereof), but no matter.
On 5/13/07, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 06:15 PM 5/13/2007, you wrote: >I expect better of you, Louis. Please tell me the name of an author >who says that crop-rotation was unique to western Europe. You've read >a lot of stuff on pre-capitalist and capitalist agriculture in Europe, >so clearly you know. Devine, did you clip my reference to the author who believed that crop rotation was unique to Europe? I don't have the patience to track it down. In any case, I wrote: >>Among these Eurocentric historians farming practices loom larger than any other supposedly objective criterion underpinning the rise of the West. The West is the world of the plucky, inventive yeoman farmer, while the despotic East employed unproductive farming techniques. Benefiting from his early training and fieldwork in agronomy, Blaut presents an alternative interpretation. For example, while Michael Mann considers soil fertility in Europe to be the key to its rise, Blaut points out that until the arrival of the potato from South America, a vast swath of land across Europe remained unproductive because of excess rainfall, conditions beneficial only to potato growth. Meanwhile, crop rotation--supposedly unique to the West--was found in the rest of the world.<< When you go to Blaut's chapter on Michael Mann, he quotes him that were four crucial inventions that "probably gave western Europe a decisive advantage over Asia." They were plowing, shoeing and harnessing of draught animals, field rotation and the water-mill. The citation is from Mann's "The Sources of Social Power", page 8.
-- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
