Between 1973 and 1985 Cambridge University Press published the three volumes of An Historical Geography of Europe. The present book represents an attempt to condense and streamline these earlier volumes. At the same time its coverage has been extended to include the British Isles and Russia, both omitted from the earlier study. The method, as in the earlier volumes, has been to alternate “horizontal” pictures of Europe at certain critical periods in its history with chapters that trace developments within the intervening periods. The “layer-cake” way of organizing the material has been developed and tested by J. O. M. Broek in his study of the Santa Clara Valley, by H. C. Darby in A New Historical Geography of England after 1600 (1986), and by others since their publication.

The horizontal chapters, as well as the connecting vertical interludes, have a closely similar organization, dealing in turn with population and urban development, agriculture, manufacturing, and trade. Changes in the physical environment have been touched on only when they seem relevant to human development. It should be possible, by taking the relevant parts of each chapter, to follow the course of, for example, population change or agricultural development through a period of almost two and a half millennia.