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Until recently, historians tended to stress the perceived
technological and ecological shortcomings of medieval agriculture.
The ten essays assembled in this volume offer a contrary view.
Based upon close documentary analysis of the demesne farms managed
for and by lords, they show that, by 1300, in the most
commercialized parts of England, production decisions were based
upon relative factor costs and commodity prices. Moreover, when and
where economic conditions were ripe and environmental and
institutional circumstances favourable, medieval cultivators
successfully secured high and ecologically sustainable levels of
land productivity. They achieved this by integrating crop and
livestock production into the sort of manure-intensive systems of
mixed-husbandry which later underpinned the more celebrated output
growth of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If medieval
agriculture failed to fulfill the production potential provided by
wider adoption of such systems, this is more appropriately
explained by the want of the kind of market incentives that might
have justified investment, innovation, and specialization on the
scale that characterized the so-called 'agricultural revolution',
than either the lack of appropriate agricultural technology or the
innate 'backwardness' of medieval cultivators.
Forests and woodlands provide an enormous range of goods and
services to society, from timber and firewood to medicinal plants,
watershed protection, destinations for tourists and sacred sites.
Only when these are understood and valued can forests and their
resources be properly managed and conserved. This work shows how
the complicated network of benefits can be untangled and sets out
the different approaches needed to value them. It covers the
analysis of plant-based markets, non-market valuation and decision
frameworks such as cost-benefit analysis.
The later Middle Ages was an overwhelmingly rural world, with
probably three out of four households reliant upon farming for a
living. Yet conventional accounts of the period rarely do justice
to the variety of ways in which the land was managed and worked.
The thirteen essays collected in this volume draw upon the abundant
documentary evidence of the period to explore that diversity. In
the process they engage with the issue of classification - without
which effective generalisation is impossible - and offer a series
of solutions to that particularly thorny methodological challenge.
Only through systematic and objective classification is it possible
to differentiate between and map different field systems, husbandry
types, and land-use categories. That, in turn, makes it possible to
consider and evaluate the relative roles of soils and topography,
institutional structures, and commercialised market demand in
shaping farm enterprise both during the period of mounting
population before the Black Death and the long era of demographic
decline that followed it. What emerges is an agrarian world more
commercialised, differentiated, and complex than is usually
appreciated, whose institutional and agronomic contours shaped the
course of agricultural development for centuries to come.
Until recently, historians tended to stress the perceived
technological and ecological shortcomings of medieval agriculture.
The ten essays assembled in this volume offer a contrary view.
Based upon close documentary analysis of the demesne farms managed
for and by lords, they show that, by 1300, in the most
commercialized parts of England, production decisions were based
upon relative factor costs and commodity prices. Moreover, when and
where economic conditions were ripe and environmental and
institutional circumstances favourable, medieval cultivators
successfully secured high and ecologically sustainable levels of
land productivity. They achieved this by integrating crop and
livestock production into the sort of manure-intensive systems of
mixed-husbandry which later underpinned the more celebrated output
growth of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If medieval
agriculture failed to fulfill the production potential provided by
wider adoption of such systems, this is more appropriately
explained by the want of the kind of market incentives that might
have justified investment, innovation, and specialization on the
scale that characterized the so-called 'agricultural revolution',
than either the lack of appropriate agricultural technology or the
innate 'backwardness' of medieval cultivators.
Forests and woodlands provide an enormous range of goods and
services to society, from timber and firewood to medicinal plants,
watershed protection, destinations for tourists and sacred sites.
Only when these are understood and valued can forests and their
resources be properly managed and conserved. This work shows how
the complicated network of benefits can be untangled and sets out
the different approaches needed to value them. It covers the
analysis of plant-based markets, non-market valuation and decision
frameworks such as cost-benefit analysis.
Presents the latest research on the causes and consequences of
British population change from the medieval period to the eve of
the Industrial Revolution, in both town and countryside Population,
Welfare and Economic Change presents the latest research on the
causes and consequences of British population change from the
medieval period to the eve of the Industrial Revolution, in both
town and countryside. Its overarching concern is with the economic
and demographic decision-making of individuals and groups and the
extent to which these were constrained by institutions and
resources. Within this, the volume's particular focus is on
population growth: its causes and the welfare challenges it posed.
Several chapters investigate the success with which the English Old
Poor Law provided care for the poor and elderly, and new work on
alternative welfare institutions, such as almshouses, is also
presented. A further distinctive feature of this book is its
comparative perspective. By making systematic comparisons between
economic and demographic developments in pre-industrial Britain and
those taking place in various regions of contemporary Continental
Europe and Russia, several chapters uncover how far Britain in this
period was 'different'. Stimulating to experts and students alike,
Population, Welfareand Economic Change offers overviews and
summaries of the latest scholarship by leading economic historians
and historical demographers, alongside detailed case studies which
showcase the original research of younger scholars. Chris Briggs is
Lecturer in Medieval British Economic and Social History at the
University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College. P.M. Kitson
is a former Research Associate at the Cambridge Group for the
Historyof Population and Social Structure and Bye-Fellow of Downing
College, Cambridge. S.J. Thompson is a former J.H. Plumb Fellow and
Director of Studies in History at Christ's College, Cambridge.
CONTRIBUTORS: Lorraine Barry, Jeremy Boulton, Chris Briggs, Bruce
M.S. Campbell, Tracy Dennison, Nigel Goose, R.W. Hoyle, Peter
Kitson, Julie Marfany, Rebecca Oakes, Sheilagh Ogilvie, Stephen
Thompson, Samantha Williams, Sir Tony Wrigley, Margaret Yates
The later Middle Ages was an overwhelmingly rural world, with
probably three out of four households reliant upon farming for a
living. Yet conventional accounts of the period rarely do justice
to the variety of ways in which the land was managed and worked.
The thirteen essays collected in this volume draw upon the abundant
documentary evidence of the period to explore that diversity. In
the process they engage with the issue of classification - without
which effective generalisation is impossible - and offer a series
of solutions to that particularly thorny methodological challenge.
Only through systematic and objective classification is it possible
to differentiate between and map different field systems, husbandry
types, and land-use categories. That, in turn, makes it possible to
consider and evaluate the relative roles of soils and topography,
institutional structures, and commercialised market demand in
shaping farm enterprise both during the period of mounting
population before the Black Death and the long era of demographic
decline that followed it. What emerges is an agrarian world more
commercialised, differentiated, and complex than is usually
appreciated, whose institutional and agronomic contours shaped the
course of agricultural development for centuries to come.
In the fourteenth century the Old World witnessed a series of
profound and abrupt changes in the trajectory of long-established
historical trends. Transcontinental networks of exchange fractured
and an era of economic contraction and demographic decline dawned
from which Latin Christendom would not begin to emerge until its
voyages of discovery at the end of the fifteenth century. In a
major new study of this 'Great Transition', Bruce Campbell assesses
the contributions of commercial recession, war, climate change, and
eruption of the Black Death to a far-reaching reversal of fortunes
from which no part of Eurasia was spared. The book synthesises a
wealth of new historical, palaeo-ecological and biological
evidence, including estimates of national income, reconstructions
of past climates, and genetic analysis of DNA extracted from the
teeth of plague victims, to provide a fresh account of the
creation, collapse and realignment of Western Europe's late
medieval commercial economy.
This is a definitive new account of Britain's economic evolution
from a backwater of Europe in 1270 to the hub of the global economy
in 1870. A team of leading economic historians reconstruct
Britain's national accounts for the first time right back into the
thirteenth century to show what really happened quantitatively
during the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution.
Contrary to traditional views of the earlier period as one of
Malthusian stagnation, they reveal how the transition to modern
economic growth built on the earlier foundations of a persistent
upward trend in GDP per capita which doubled between 1270 and 1700.
Featuring comprehensive estimates of population, land use,
agricultural production, industrial and service sector production
and GDP per capita, as well as analysis of their implications, this
will be an essential reference for anyone interested in British
economic history and the origins of modern economic growth more
generally.
In the fourteenth century the Old World witnessed a series of
profound and abrupt changes in the trajectory of long-established
historical trends. Transcontinental networks of exchange fractured
and an era of economic contraction and demographic decline dawned
from which Latin Christendom would not begin to emerge until its
voyages of discovery at the end of the fifteenth century. In a
major new study of this 'Great Transition', Bruce Campbell assesses
the contributions of commercial recession, war, climate change, and
eruption of the Black Death to a far-reaching reversal of fortunes
from which no part of Eurasia was spared. The book synthesises a
wealth of new historical, palaeo-ecological and biological
evidence, including estimates of national income, reconstructions
of past climates, and genetic analysis of DNA extracted from the
teeth of plague victims, to provide a fresh account of the
creation, collapse and realignment of Western Europe's late
medieval commercial economy.
Bruce Campbell's book, first published in 2000, was the first
single-authored treatment of medieval English agriculture at a
national scale. It deals comprehensively with the cultivation
carried out by or for lords on their demesne farms, for which the
documentation is more detailed and abundant than for any other
agricultural group either during the medieval period or later. A
context is thereby assured for all future work on the medieval and
early modern agrarian economies. The book also makes a substantive
contribution to ongoing historical debates about the dimensions,
chronology and causes of the medieval cycle of expansion, crisis
and contraction. Topics dealt with include the scale and
composition of seigniorial estates, the geography of land-use,
pastoral husbandry, arable husbandry, land productivity, levels of
commercialization and the size of the population in relation to the
consumption of food at any given time.
Bruce Campbell's book, first published in 2000, was the first
single-authored treatment of medieval English agriculture at a
national scale. It deals comprehensively with the cultivation
carried out by or for lords on their demesne farms, for which the
documentation is more detailed and abundant than for any other
agricultural group either during the medieval period or later. A
context is thereby assured for all future work on the medieval and
early modern agrarian economies. The book also makes a substantive
contribution to ongoing historical debates about the dimensions,
chronology and causes of the medieval cycle of expansion, crisis
and contraction. Topics dealt with include the scale and
composition of seigniorial estates, the geography of land-use,
pastoral husbandry, arable husbandry, land productivity, levels of
commercialization and the size of the population in relation to the
consumption of food at any given time.
This is a definitive new account of Britain's economic evolution
from a backwater of Europe in 1270 to the hub of the global economy
in 1870. A team of leading economic historians reconstruct
Britain's national accounts for the first time right back into the
thirteenth century to show what really happened quantitatively
during the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution.
Contrary to traditional views of the earlier period as one of
Malthusian stagnation, they reveal how the transition to modern
economic growth built on the earlier foundations of a persistent
upward trend in GDP per capita which doubled between 1270 and 1700.
Featuring comprehensive estimates of population, land use,
agricultural production, industrial and service sector production
and GDP per capita, as well as analysis of their implications, this
will be an essential reference for anyone interested in British
economic history and the origins of modern economic growth more
generally.
This is the third collection of articles by Bruce Campbell to
appear in the Variorum series. Late medieval England was an
overwhelmingly rural society. Never since has such a large
proportion of the population lived in the countryside or relied so
directly for its livelihood upon agriculture. The lot of a majority
of that population was always a hard one - and never more so than
during the first half of the 14th century, when peasants competed
with each other for ever-scarcer land and work and a succession of
major harvest failures jeopardised the survival of many.
Nevertheless, experience varied considerably, both during this era
of mounting population pressure and the century and more of
population decline and stagnation that followed the demographic
disaster of the Black Death. How well individual communities coped
during these contrasting conditions of expansion and contraction
owed much to the quality and composition of their natural-resource
endowment, a good deal to their ability to take advantage of
changing commercial opportunities, and sometimes almost everything
to how exposed they were to military conflict. Always, however,
much hinged upon how the twin feudal institutions of lordship and
serfdom were mapped onto land and people via the manorial system.
These are the themes variously explored by the eight essays
assembled in this volume, which range from a case-study of a single
crowded Norfolk manor to a consideration of the broad and, towards
the end of the Middle Ages, widening contrasts that persisted
between North and South.
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