Geoscience Reference
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failed to analyze changing environmental conditions as a key dimension to under-
standing the evolution of any human society.
25
Nevertheless, until recently, their
presence has tended to vanish between the historians devoted to modern and con-
temporary times.
This growing lack of interest cannot be attributed to the loss of relevance of such
environmental factors, as it is from mid-twentieth century onwards when the impact
of human societies on the face of the Earth has become more intense, global and
dangerous. The reason is ideological, and derives from a way of seeing reality that
has characterized the two major socio-economic visions of the 20th century.
26
Within the mainstream approach to these two great visions, natural environments
were considered as a set of restrictions and limitations that development would
overcome. By seeing economic growth as a
of environmental con-
straints, the relevance of their study was considered inversely proportional to the
degree of technological progress. Hence the explanatory weight of environmental
factors was seen to decrease with the time-distance to the present covered by the
analysis, in open contradiction with the degree of human degradation of Earth
“
liberation
”
s
ecosystems. Thus, this long-lasting Faustian vision of the modern Unbound Pro-
metheus has paid a learned ignorance to the environmental dimension, until the
obvious signs of a global ecological crisis have forced many to rethink.
27
Since it is impossible to summarize within this text all lines of research which
are currently changing the old visions of economic growth that formerly remained
disconnected from environmental constraints and effects, we will take only a few
relevant issues and ongoing debates as examples to illustrate the new emerging
trends.
'
2.4 The Socio-metabolic Proles of Past Organic
and Present Industrial Economies
Until the mid 1980s a tradition of historical studies of pre-industrial agrarian
economies was highly skewed by a pessimistic reading of the classical economists,
especially Malthus and Ricardo. The work of B.H. Slicher van Bath, Michael
Postan, Wilhelm Abel or David Grigg emphasized the dif
culties experienced by
traditional societies to increase agricultural output per capita because of the limits
imposed by technological backwardness, and the inevitable arrival of diminishing
returns spurred by population growth.
28
This tradition has been revisited and
25
Bloch (
1955
1956
), Slicher van Bath (
1963
), Campbell and Overton (
1991
), Overton (
1996
)
and Allen (
2008
).
26
-
Thompson (
1991
) and Scott (
1998
).
27
Landes (
1969
) and Landes (
1998
).
28
Postan (
1973
), Abel (
1980
) and Grigg (
1982
).
