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Article ID: CBB356539392

The Price of Nitrogen at the End of the Nineteenth Century (2021)

Arnaud Page (Author)
Laurent Herment (Author)

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook
Volume: 62
Issue: 1
Pages: 49-70
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

DOI: 10.1515/jbwg-2021-0003

Publication Date: 2021
Edition Details: Special issue: Fertilisers in the Long 19th Century and Beyond: Usage, Commercialisation and Production (c 1800-1939) [Düngemittel im langen 19. Jahrhundert und darüber hinaus: Nutzung, Vermarktung und Produktion (ca. 1800-1939)]

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The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the concomitant and entangled processes of the rise of agricultural chemistry and that of the fertiliser trade. Yet, while the two were undoubtedly related, the work of agricultural chemists was not necessarily characterized by the uniform and unequivocal promotion of fertilisers. This article looks at some of the complex ways in which chemists participated in the development of the fertiliser trade by studying how their work was used to ascribe a commercial price to a chemical element. It analyses the contested development of the idea that nitrogen, in particular, could be given a price, and shows how the rise of this quotation lay at the intersection of scientific and commercial considerations. More broadly, it argues that the importance of the new artificial fertilisers primarily lay not so much in yield increases as in inaugurating a new regime marked by a more comprehensive quantitative assessment of inputs and outputs, thereby playing a key role in the industrialisation of agriculture.

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Article Arnaud Page; Laurent Herment; Christine Strotmann (2021) Fertilisers in the Long 19th Century and Beyond: Usage, Commercialisation and Production (c 1800–1939). Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook (pp. 1-18). unapi

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