The Classical Agricultural Revolution

[Faeelin]

Not the European one of the early modern era; I'm talking about the Arabic one here.

In OTL, the Arabic conquests witnessed the spread of crops like rice, citrus fruits, cotton, sugar cane, melons, hard wheat, bananas, mangos, artichokes.... as well as dyes like indigo.

You get the idea. Suffice it to say that these crops had a revolutionary impact on the Mediterranean world.

What if they had reached the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic world? Some of them, like sugar, wouldn't; it was stilly fairly rare in India. But even the introduction of hard wheat, rice, and cotton would have important effects.

[Max Sinister]

Maybe we need Alexander to live longer than OTL to get that. Maybe even conquering Carthage - in his über-empire, exchange of crops would be possible.

[Shadow Knight]

Well if they reach the table of the 'common man' then access to a greater variety in ones diet can lead to longer life...or so I am told. That and if it is a seperate type of grain any type of blight on one might not affect the other limiting the effects of that type of famine.

[carlton_bach]

I don't think the medical implications would be that big. The diet of the classical world was very varied and on the whole healthy, and any newcomer might just as plausibly replace an established food (does anyone here still eat orach? Blame spinach).

The cultural implications of cotton would be more interesting, although this is not necessarily a good thing, Cotton is very labpour-intensive and while it brings high yields, it also produces nothing but fibre, whereas flax produces an oilseed. We may see poor people in cotton areas suffer fat-deprived diets.

Durum wheat could lead to an earlier invention of pasta and rice create demand for land in swampy areas, but neither would have the kind of impact the potato had.

Sugarcane could create a new luxury food model, with hevily sweetened syrups and preserved fruit. And people are pretty much certain to come up with hard candy. Again, sugarcane competes with established crops, but I could see it work in many less favored regions, so it would create some economic upswing for the cultivators (or owners).

What we would really need for a revolution is a crop, or technique, that could push the envelope in the undeveloped regions to the north and south. Rye, oats, spelt and heavy ploughs did the trick up north eventually. What grows well in (semi-)arid, sandy soils?

[Faeelin]

I don't think the medical implications would be that big. The diet of the classical world was very varied and on the whole healthy, and any newcomer might just as plausibly replace an established food (does anyone here still eat orach? Blame spinach).

Hmm. I'm reading an article on it, "The Arab Agricultural Revolution and its Diffusion, 700-1100 AD".

The gist of the author's argument is that the new crops let mediterranean farmers use the summer, as well as the winter, as growing seasons. Hard wheat was particularly useful for this.


What we would really need for a revolution is a crop, or technique, that could push the envelope in the undeveloped regions to the north and south. Rye, oats, spelt and heavy ploughs did the trick up north eventually. What grows well in (semi-)arid, sandy soils?

Corn and potatoes.

Err, wait.

Didn't rye gradually replaced with wheat up north?

[Hendryk]

Don't forget hemp, a versatile crop if there ever was one. Beyond the obvious applications as a painkiller and a recreational drug, it also can be used for making ropes, clothing, isothermic materials and oil. And it grows quite well in the Mediterranean climate.

[carlton_bach]

Hmm. I'm reading an article on it, "The Arab Agricultural Revolution and its Diffusion, 700-1100 AD".

The gist of the author's argument is that the new crops let mediterranean farmers use the summer, as well as the winter, as growing seasons. Hard wheat was particularly useful for this.


I doubt it, given that summer crops were already in existence in Roman times. It did, however, give them a wider variety of cash crops and diversity 'life insurance', and got them away from the less popular foods like vetches and acorns.


Corn and potatoes.

Err, wait.

Didn't rye gradually replaced with wheat up north?

Eventually yes, but the grain that 'conquered' Northern Europe was rye. Wheat was preferred for a large number of reasons (my guess is that it just tastes better, first off), but until increasingly cold- and moisture-resistanct varieties developed, rye was life insurance. In many parts of Northern Europe, you still can't grow even modern hybrids very well. It's oats, rye and buckwheat all the way.

[carlton_bach]

Don't forget hemp, a versatile crop if there ever was one. Beyond the obvious applications as a painkiller and a recreational drug, it also can be used for making ropes, clothing, isothermic materials and oil. And it grows quite well in the Mediterranean climate.

But I believe it has been doing that for a long time indeed. At least there are mentions in Roman era texts.

Oh, and you can eat hemp shoots. No appreciable effect other than that they taste quite pleasant.

[Faeelin]

I doubt it, given that summer crops were already in existence in Roman times. It did, however, give them a wider variety of cash crops and diversity 'life insurance', and got them away from the less popular foods like vetches and acorns.


Let's turn this around then. What do you think accounted for the population boom that occurred in Al-Andalus, where we go from small towns to cities with tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people in a few generations?

[carlton_bach]

Let's turn this around then. What do you think accounted for the population boom that occurred in Al-Andalus, where we go from small towns to cities with tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people in a few generations?

Back to such cities, in many instances. My explanation is:

- better agriculture (not necessarily in theory, but in practice - the Arabs were good a implementing technology transfers, and under the Visigoths things had gone to hell in a handbasket)

- profit retention in country

- better social organisation leading to more stability and long-term incvestment

- population movement/accretion following political patterns

- a recovery of the nonagricultural sector, boosted by active patronage

- urban lifestyles returning to popularity as subsistence farming goes out of fashion

- less war

- possibly, though dubiously, different, less restrictive sexual morals and a revaluation of children as an unalloyed good (the church in Visigothic Spain was infamous for its ultra-ascetric stance on all matters sexual)

Take your pick. Basically, I'd say it is one thing to have a superior, entirely new agricultural method (which I doubt the Arabs did) and another to manage the implementation of medium-scale technological progress and melioration (which they did very well).

[LordKalvan]

Let's turn this around then. What do you think accounted for the population boom that occurred in Al-Andalus, where we go from small towns to cities with tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people in a few generations?
More stable government, better food production, reintroduction of commerce:
the same thing happened in Italy starting from the 10th century.
As Carlton points out, it is more of a return to the old Roman cities than founding new ones. The Visigothic civilization (as well as the Frankish one) was centered on the villa, not on the city. The Arab one (like the Greek and Roman) is centered around a city.

[Mike Stearns]

Maybe we need Alexander to live longer than OTL to get that. Maybe even conquering Carthage - in his über-empire, exchange of crops would be possible.

If that's the case then there'd be much less need for overseas exploration as Europeans would already have access to alot of the things that they wanted from Asia. Could this delay or even prevent the finding of North America?

[carlton_bach]

If that's the case then there'd be much less need for overseas exploration as Europeans would already have access to alot of the things that they wanted from Asia. Could this delay or even prevent the finding of North America?

Unlikely. The one thing the Europeans really wanted from India - spices - wouldn't grow in the Med anyway.

But then, my personal pet theory is that America was never really 'lost' and that the 'dioscovery' was really the time at which Europe's information infrastructure and technology allowed effective dissemination and exploitation.