The Future of West European Agriculture: An Exercise in Applied History

In his "La Méditerranée", Fernand Braudel introduced the three-level scheme of social time with the concepts "histoire structurelle (quasi-immobile)," "histoire conjoncturelle," and "histoire événe-mentielle" and ascribed to each its own pace of development He also emphasized the importance of long-term developments ("la longue durée") in historical analysis. Aided by these critical insights the author first tries to prognosticate the possible developments in European agriculture up to the middle of the next century. Then he confronts his findings with those of historians of agriculture (especially Slicher van Bath) who studied secular developments in agriculture in the European past, in order to determine how his prognostication fits in with their findings. The application of historical knowledge to expected developments might contribute to put these in the right perspective and to evaluate the consequences of such developments in more detail.