Overview
Offering a broad perspective on agrarian problems such as depopulation and social conflict, this collection of essays on agriculture and rural society in the late Middle Ages follows the period of the Black Death. With illustrative material from local and regional research showing how general problems were worked out in specific contexts, the contributors supply detailed studies from regional British contexts relating to the use of the land, the movement of prices, the distribution of property, the organization of trade, and the cohesion of a village society. This study also features new research on several aspects of regional development in medieval England and other European countries: Robert Swanson discusses how the collection of tithes to maintain local clergy in the medieval Church contributed to the commercialization of trade in grain and other agricultural products, while Peter Larson shows how villagers became increasingly prone to violence in the generations following the Black Death.Author Biography
Richard Britnell taught in the University of Durham from 1966 until his retirement in 2003. He specializes in the economic and social history of the medieval period and is the author of several monographs and textbooks. He was elected as a fellow of the British Academy in 2005. Ben Dodds is a lecturer at the University of Durham and specializes in late-medieval economic and social history.