Environment and
History Environment and
History
Environment and History 7(2001): 131-167
A continual western history of humans feeding beyond the bounds of natural local ecosystems goes back to Europe's high and later Middle Ages. This essay considers medieval long distance trades in grain, cattle, and preserved fish as antecedents to today's globalised movements of foodstuffs. Pulled by demand from consumers in populous and wealthy western Europe, significant amounts of plants, animals, their biomass, and their calories moved across major ecological boundaries, notably from thinly populated areas on Europe's peripheries. As today, the large cultural, economic, and ecological consequences are unevenly acknowledged. Distant zones of perceived abundance let consumers avoid changing their own cultural preferences and social practices by externalising, even forgetting, the social and environmental costs of satisfying them.
This article is available online (PDF format) from ingenta. Access is free if your institution subscribes to Environment and History.
Reprints of this article can be ordered from ingenta or the British Library Document Supply Service
Contact the publishers for subscriptions and back numbers of Environment and History.
Other papers in this volume
THE WHITE HORSE PRESS
1 Strond
ISLE OF HARRIS HS5 3UD, UK
Tel: +44 1859520204