The crisis of feudalism: An environmental history

Environmental history may help explain feudalism's demise and capitalism's ascent in the 16th century. Medieval Europe was riven by profound socio-ecological contradictions. Feudalism's environmental degradation pivoted on the lord-peasant relationship, which limited the possibilities for reinvestment in the land. Consequently, feudalism exhausted the soil and the labor power from which it derived revenues, rendering the population vulnerable to disease. The Black Death decisively altered labor-land ratios in favor of western Europe's peasantry. This new balance of class forces eliminated the possibility of feudal restoration and led the states, landlords, and merchants to favor geographical expansion - an external rather than internal spatial fix to feudal crisis. This external fix, beginning in the Atlantic world, had capitalist commodity production and exchange inscribed within it. Capitalism differed radically from feudalism in that where earlier ecological crises had been local, capitalism globalized them. From this standpoint, the origins of capitalism may shed light on today's ecological crises.