In their ambitious book, Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart apply a “theory of the evolution of agrarian systems” (p. 51) to the agricultural history of Europe, with excursions to the Nile Valley and the Inca Empire from its origins to the present. They define the theory vaguely as “a tool that makes it possible to represent the continual transformations of agriculture in a region of the world as a succession of distinct systems, forming a definite historical series” (p. 51). What makes a system is that all the constituents fit together in a more or less productive whole. Each system is defined by the constituents that differentiate it from those of other times and places. They operate in different environments with different tools and sources of energy.

After describing briefly the Neolithic centers where agriculture was inventedthe Near East, Central America, China, New Guinea, South America, and North Americathe authors analyze slash-and-burn agriculture. Within a forest with only “ineffective rudimentary manual tools” (p. 104), cultivators achieved the fertile clean soil they needed by cutting down some of the trees and burning them. Then they grew crops for a few years until fertility diminished and a new portion of the forest had to be cut. The process could continue indefinitely, provided the time between cuttings was long enough. As population grew, the time shrank and the system no longer remained viable.

It was replaced in the first of a series of agricultural revolutions that form the authors' evolutionary scheme. The revolution of antiquity created a system practiced in temperate regions based on a new way of maintaining fertilityfallowinga new source of motive poweranimalsand a new technologythe ard or scratch plow. The authors are acute in their assessment of fallowing: “The widespread idea that fallowing is a period of ‘rest’ for the soil” after bearing crops “is complete nonsense” (p. 233). Yet the productive capacity of this form of agriculture was low, and Greek and Roman states were forced to acquire colonies in order to feed themselves. When the Roman Empire could no longer expand, crisis ensued and the system collapsed.

The next agricultural revolution, occurring in northwestern Europe during the Middle Ages, was the familiar transition to the heavy or moldboard plow and triennial rotation accompanied by an increase in farm animals. The new plows prepared the soil better, and the larger number of animals transferred more organic matter from noncultivated to arable land to better maintain fertility. The productivity of land increased, population grew, and commerce and cities expanded. Nothing new in this account, and some of the explanations, such as the transformative significance of the horse collar, have been questioned recently. By the early fourteenth century, population pressure led to “overexploitation and crisis,” which was eased for a while by the plague but then reappeared at the end of the sixteenth century (p. 308).

Here and throughout, the authors tell a Malthusian story in which improvements in techniques lead to overpopulation and crisis. They calculate how much land is needed to support a person in each system, based on a food requirement of two quintals of grain per person per year (p. 116), and the productivity of the land in the system. When the population density exceeds that amount, crisis ensues.

“The first agricultural revolution of modern times,” produced a system in which fallowing was eliminated (p. 313). New fodder crops, which allowed for increases in animals raised and manure produced, continued the advances of the Middle Ages. Again, this is nothing new, but the authors' account of how the new rotations worked and how fertility was maintained is clear and makes good use of their understanding of agricultural practices and soil chemistry. On the other hand, their discussion of institutional changesenclosure, the abolition of common rightsomits any mention of the contributions of contemporary economic historians, which have altered our understanding of these transformations.

Then in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, “animal-drawn cultivation” was mechanized (e.g., harvesting and threshing) and transportation of imputs and products revolutionized to produce a “crisis of agricultural overproduction” (p. 355). European farmers faced the threat of competition, which they met by specialization in perishables in Denmark and the Netherlands and protection in France and Germany.

The contemporary system is characterized by “motorization, mechanization, synthetic fertilizers, seed selection, and specialization” (p. 375). In their discussion of it, the authors introduce the concept of a “threshold of renewal” (p. 410). Only those farmers who are above it can continue to invest in ever more costly equipment and survive, while most farmers fall below and eventually leave the countryside. The “enormous price fluctuations” that characterize this system hurt both producers and consumers (p. 427). They yield “the growing poverty that affects one-half of humanity” and that results in a world economic crisis (p. 440).

Now returning to the third world for a final, non-historical chapter, Mazoyer and Roudart call for government policies to help the poor peasants who are central to the crisis. They propose raising agricultural prices and shifting terms of trade in favor of the poor, followed by “a policy of balanced agricultural development in each country … directed … toward the peasantry” (p. 494).

In its broad outlines, then, A History of World Agriculture retraces a path that will be familiar to most students of agricultural history. The narrative would have been standard fodder forty years ago. While there are useful insights, many coming from the authors' specialization in agronomy (both are professors at the Institut National Agronomique in Paris), it is hard to recommend the volume to agricultural or economic historians. They would have to plow through much that is familiar to get the nuggets of originality and would be disappointed by the lack of economic analysis or reference to current research and controversies.

If not specialists, what audience could benefit? A broad survey of world or European agricultural history would be valuable since nothing like that has been published in English for decades. The lack of a bibliography in the English version weakens its value considerably, however, and the haphazard footnotes add little. These faults are symptomatic of the lack of attention in the translation. While the English itself is perfectly acceptable, errors like “grass yield” for “gross yield” (pp. 242–43) are bothersome. It is disappointing that those responsible for the production of the volume failed to ensure that it properly reflects the authors' strengths.