The first draft of this book was made during the winter of 1984–5, when I held a scholarship at the European University Institute in Florence. In its original form it was inspired in important respects by the Danish economist Ester Boserup, particularly by her pioneering work The Conditions of Agricultural Growth (1965). In 1987 I was in the United States as a Danish Fulbright guest lecturer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Here I met Wes Jackson, director of the Land Institute in Salina, and Professor Donald Worster, Brandeis University (now at the University of Kansas). They – and their books – opened my eyes to fundamental ecohistorical correlations. Donald Worster also drew my attention to the great American pioneer in the field of environmental history, James C. Malin (1893–1979). This encounter with American historiography caused me to revise many of my ideas, and I rewrote the whole book.

The Danish edition, Den danske Revolution 1500–1800. En økohistorisk tolkning, was published in 1991 (reprinted twice in 1992). A sixty-seven-page appendix entitled “Domesticeret kløver i Danmark 1749–1805” [Domesticated clover in Denmark, 1749–1805] has been omitted from the present English translation. Elsewhere a number of factual errors have been corrected, and in some places the text has been slightly shortened or rephrased.

In connection with the publication of the English version I should once again like to thank Wes Jackson and Donald Worster, who paved the way for the book to be published by the Cambridge University Press. I also extend my thanks to Professor Arnold H. Barton, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois.