Economics – Rural Archive
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The emergence of concentrated settlements in medieval Western Europe: explanatory frameworks in the historiography
Posted on April 12, 2014 | No CommentsThere is now a general scholarly consensus that the concentration of rural people into settlements in Western Europe (as opposed to dispersed or scattered habitations across the countryside) occurred in various stages between the eighth and twelfth centuries, though with regional divergences in precise timing, speed, formation, and intensity. -
Bastard Feudalism in England in the Fourteenth Century
Posted on March 3, 2014 | No CommentsAs this summary indicates, the study of fifteenth-century bastard feudalism has shown the necessity of exploring both the private relationship – its nature, extent and function – and the public system of local rule within which it operated and of which it was an essential part. -
How to defraud your lord on the medieval manor
Posted on February 26, 2014 | No CommentsHere are six ways to commit fraud explained by Robert Carpenter in the 13th century. -
Tenure to Contract: Lordship and Clientage in Thirteenth-Century England
Posted on February 23, 2014 | No CommentsEnglish historians have increasingly stressed the underlying continuity between feudalism and 'bastard feudalism.' Indentured retaining is no longer seen as a corrupted and disruptive form of feudalism, but instead as its 'logical successor.' -
Pruning Peasants: Private War and Maintaining the Lords’ Peace in Late Medieval Germany
Posted on February 3, 2014 | No Comments'Peasants are best when they grieve, and worst when they rejoice.' -
Environmental Effects in the Agriculture of Medieval Egypt
Posted on January 20, 2014 | No CommentsAgriculture has been the main source of the economy for all dynasties established in Egypt and the Mamluk kingdom was no exception. -
Ragnhild Simunsdatter and women’s social and economic position in Norse society
Posted on January 13, 2014 | No CommentsIn this paper I will focus on Norse women's social and economic position in the high and late Middle Ages, with Ragnhild Simonsdatter and the Papa Stour document of 1299 as a point of departure. -
Commons in the late medieval Crown of Aragon: Regulation, uses and conflicts, 13th-15th centuries
Posted on December 21, 2013 | No CommentsIn this paper, we shall show some characteristics of the use of pastures and commons in the Crown of Aragon between the thirteen and fifteenth centuries. -
Managing the Commons: The role of the elites in the uses of common lands in the Midlands of the kingdom of Valencia during the Middle Ages
Posted on December 21, 2013 | No CommentsIn a recent paper, Danie Curtis has given a framework for classifying preindustrial societies in accordance with four variables, these are, the property, the power, the market of basic products and the modes of production. -
Learning by doing or expert knowledge? Technological innovations in dike-building in coastal Flanders (13th-18th centuries AD)
Posted on December 10, 2013 | No CommentsDike construction apparently uses simple technology, with slow and gradual change; not the kind of technology that reshaped the material conditions of living, comparable to the spread of electricity or sanitation in the 19th century ‘networked’ city (and linked to the disciplining of society and the rise of domesticity and the modern self-reflexive individual) (often inspired by Latour and Foucault). -
The Black Death, Economic and Social Change and the Great Rising of 1381 in Hertfordshire
Posted on December 10, 2013 | No CommentsWhat drove medieval people to such desperation that they felt they had no other course of action other than revolt? Was this a spontaneous reaction to a perceived injustice or a desperate response to years of simmering resentment? -
The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
Posted on December 8, 2013 | No CommentsLife for the revolutionary peasants was structured by feudal ties and obligations. The villein was tied to the soil until he could buy his freedom. He lived in a wattle and daub hut with his family and animals on a floor of mud. Work began at dawn on his few (often separated) strips of land; he was obligated to work on his lord's land three days a week, tend and shear his sheep, feed his swine, and sow and reap his crops. -
![Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40, 3 (2013) Abstract In early fourteenth-century Lucca, […]](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/watch-2-115x90.jpg "Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History")
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History
Posted on November 24, 2013 | No CommentsHealthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40, 3 (2013) Abstract In early fourteenth-century Lucca, […] -
The Trends Toward Serfdom in Mediaeval England
Posted on November 20, 2013 | No CommentsThe bald theory of progressive subjection during Anglo-Saxon times does not appear possible of definition; and even as a hypothesis, it would seem inadequate. -
Grain Prices in Cairo and Europe in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 14, 2013 | No CommentsHow did price levels and trends in Cairo compare to those in Europe? -
Into the frontier: medieval land reclamation and the creation of new societies. Comparing Holland and the Po Valley, 800-1500
Posted on September 29, 2013 | No CommentsIn the paper it is shown that medieval land reclamation led to the emergence of two very divergent societies, characterised by a number of different configurations; (a) power and property structure, (b) modes of exploitation, (c) economic portfolios, and (d) commodity markets. -
![Peasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent By Donald R. Abbott Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 11 (1980) Introduction: Considerable treatment has been devoted […]](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/harvestor-115x115.jpg "Peasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent")
Peasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent
Posted on September 2, 2013 | No CommentsPeasant Society as Revealed by a Thirteenth-Century Manorial Extent By Donald R. Abbott Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 11 (1980) Introduction: Considerable treatment has been devoted […] -
Medieval Europeans and their Aquatic Ecosystems
Posted on August 23, 2013 | No CommentsPurposeful medieval fish-catching activities combined with unintended consequences of large-scale agricultural, urban, and commercial development during the Middle Ages to affect, separately and together, aquatic ecosystems and their component fish species in demonstrable ways. -
Organized Collective Violence in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Tuscan Countryside: Some Case Studies from Central and North Eastern Tuscany
Posted on July 22, 2013 | No CommentsViolence is often thought of as a characteristic of all medieval societies. How such societies chose to exercise this violence is therefore a good, and understudied, way into understanding the basic rules about how they worked. Concentrating on twelfth and thirteenth century Tuscany, my intention is to show that a specific form of violence, namely organized collective violence, was not an option available to all social groups within the medieval rural society of northern Italy... -
The Heavy Plough and the Agricultural Revolution in Medieval Europe
Posted on June 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis research tests the long-standing hypothesis, put forth by Lynn White, Jr., that the adoption of the heavy plough in northern Europe led to increased population density and urbanization -
The Ecology and Economics of Medieval Deer Parks
Posted on May 22, 2013 | No CommentsThere is a wealth of literature on a diversity of aspects of medieval parks, from their invertebrate ecologies, to rare lichens and bryophytes, to their herds of deer, their fishponds, and to the politics of fashion and taste and the provision of sport and entertainment for an affluent elite. -
Cottage Gardening in the 14th Century England
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsAs a student member of this research project, I spent my fall semester investigating various aspects of 14th century English agriculture and cottage gardening and blogged regularly about my findings to exchange information with the other project members. -
Manure and the medieval social order
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsTaking examples from the open fields of England, it is argued that peasants used manure to differentiate their holdings from those of the lord, and by so doing helped to defne both space and their own social identity. -
Hunting and Hunters in Medieval Aragonese Legislation
Posted on March 18, 2013 | No CommentsOur research on hunting in the kingdom of Aragón in the 12th-15th centuries is based on the information provided by two groups of legal texts: those for local or regional areas and those that were applied to all the kingdom after the 13th century. -
The Prudent Village: Risk Pooling Institutions in Medieval English Agriculture
Posted on March 9, 2013 | No CommentsThe prudent peasant chose to scatter his farm fields to protect himself and his family from idiosyncratic agricultural shocks because better alternatives did not exist. Peasants had no better way of protecting themselves from idiosyncratic agricultural shocks.
