Hand-Mills to Wind Turbines: Technology Gatekeeping in Medieval Europe and in Contemporary Ontario
By Dennis Alan Bartels
New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Vol 5, No 2 (2012)
Introduction: In contemporary Ontario and in medieval England, the power and political influence of propertied classes and labour aristocracies were (and are) used to restrict popular access particular technologies, and to facilitate private appropriation of wealth. Past and present political-economic constraints on propagation of particular technologies, and on types of ownership of particular technologies, are explored in this commentary.
In the medieval period – ca. 1150 – 1400 CE – every English village or manor had a mill, or mills, sited on water courses, for grinding various grains into flour, the main ingredient of bread, a dietary staple. Mills were held by manorial lords, or by religious institutions such as abbeys. Peasants or serfs who worked a lord’s land were required to bring their grain to the lord’s mill for grinding. For this, the peasant had to provide a proportion of his grain – the ‘multure’ – to the lord. The amount of the multure varied widely. In some cases, serfs paid one-thirteenth while free men paid one-twenty-fourth.
Hand-Mills to Wind Turbines: Technology Gatekeeping in Medieval Europe and in Contemporary Ontario
By Dennis Alan Bartels
New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, Vol 5, No 2 (2012)
Introduction: In contemporary Ontario and in medieval England, the power and political influence of propertied classes and labour aristocracies were (and are) used to restrict popular access particular technologies, and to facilitate private appropriation of wealth. Past and present political-economic constraints on propagation of particular technologies, and on types of ownership of particular technologies, are explored in this commentary.
In the medieval period – ca. 1150 – 1400 CE – every English village or manor had a mill, or mills, sited on water courses, for grinding various grains into flour, the main ingredient of bread, a dietary staple. Mills were held by manorial lords, or by religious institutions such as abbeys. Peasants or serfs who worked a lord’s land were required to bring their grain to the lord’s mill for grinding. For this, the peasant had to provide a proportion of his grain – the ‘multure’ – to the lord. The amount of the multure varied widely. In some cases, serfs paid one-thirteenth while free men paid one-twenty-fourth.
Click here to read this article from the University of British Columbia
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