ian limit. However, population growth of this type ("free land for the taking") can be very rapid. The population of England, for example, doubled in the 16th century, in effect making good the losses from and following the Black Plague 200 years earlier.
The trend of population growth in Europe was much more gradual than we would expect from a filling-out to exploit readily available but untapped resources. It is a trend consistent, in fact, not with unchecked Malthusian population growth, but with the more gradual and steady growth of productive resources. Indeed, whatever land had gone fallow since Roman times was by 650 likely to have fully reverted to its natural condition. It thus was a wilderness that had to be broken to cultivation anew.
In the Malthusian model of population growth, we would expect the price of grain and other agricultural commodities to increase, since the supply is fixed, or increases only linearly over time, while demand grows geometrically with population. Put another way, there are more mouths to feed. Even t
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