Earlier quoted context omitted.
See though that all of these disasters are spread over 1500 years. Most of them supposedly kill people, but they don't make the land uninhabitable and nothing stops from next generations repopulating them. Keep in mind that Europe suffers at least two big plagues, migration waves, a mini ice age and lots of other disasters. The main depopulation factors are hunger and food logistics collapse.
Norway took a several centuries to get back to ~1300 levels after the Black Death going from ~37k farms in 1300 to still only 16k farms by 1520, nation wide (and we're not talking large farms here, in most cases). Entire regions were entirely abandoned by the government. Many farms that were abandoned after the plague where not cleared until the 1800's. If the population density was low to start with, and food produc…
Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?
#411You blame it all on the black death, however, Norway was on the front line of the little ice age, so those farms might have not been populated because the land itself was not able to sustain cultivation reliably. Tolkien mentions only one bad winter, but I can allow that he wasn't well versed in climate sciences and regional climate patterns. As a result we have something that can suppress population growth to a minimal level, however, we don't have good proves in the text for such events in Middle Earth.