ABSTRACT
The essence of the technical revolution, which was to lend fresh vigour to the attack on collective obligations, can be summed up in a few words: the abolition of what was described by one agronomist, Fran<;ois de Neufchateau, as 'the disgrace of the fallows'. The land which under the straight fallow system had remained unsown for one out of every two or three years was henceforth to be allowed no repose. No greater contribution could have been made to the material well-being of mankind. It meant that agricultural production could be doubled or made
to yield half as much again of its former value, so that a much larger population could be sustained; and since in practice the population increase did not keep pace exactly with the increase in yields, although there were now more people, they could be better fed than they had been in the past. Without this quite unprecedented avanced there could have been no large-scale industrial development based on huge urban populations divorced from direct contact with the soil, in a sense no 'nineteenth century', with all this expression implies for us of a time of human ferment and dramatically accelerated change.
