The Medieval Antecedents of English Agricultural Progress

by Campbell,Bruce M.S.

• ISBN13: 9780754659198
• ISBN10: 0754659194
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-28
• Publisher: Variorum

Summary

The ten essays assembled in this volume are important contributions to the present re-assessment of how the medieval 'backwardness' of English agriculture was transformed into modern 'progress'. They provide clear empirical evidence that, when and where economic, environmental, and institutional circumstances were ripe, medieval cultivators were as capable of securing high levels of land productivity as their early modern successors. 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. Contents: Introduction. Progressiveness and backwardness in 13th- and early 14th-century English agriculture: the verdict of recent research; Agricultural progress in medieval England: some evidence from eastern Norfolk; Arable productivity in medieval England: some evidence from Norfolk; Land, labour, livestock, and productivity trends in English seigneurial agriculture, 12081450; A new perspective on medieval and early mobern agriculture: 6 centuries of Norfolk farming c1250c1850; Norfolk livestock farming 12501740: a comparative study of manorial accounts and probate inventories; Commercial dairy production on medieval English demesnes: the case of Norfolk; Measuring the commercialisation of seigneurial agriculture circa 1300; Matching supply to demand: crop production and disposal by English demesnes in the century of the Black Death; Constraint or constrained? changing perspectives on medieval English agriculture; Index. About the Author: Bruce M.S. Campbell is Professor of Medieval Economic History at the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, The Queen's University of Belfast, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Progressiveness and backwardness in 13th- and early 14th-century English agriculture: the verdict of recent research

Agricultural progress in medieval England: some evidence from eastern Norfolk

Arable productivity in medieval England: some evidence from Norfolk

Land, labour, livestock, and productivity trends in English seignorial agriculture, 1208-1450

A new perspective on medieval and early modern agriculture: 6 centuries of Norfolk farming c1250-c1850 (with Mark Overton)

Norfolk livestock farming 1250-1740: a comparative study of manorial accounts and probate inventories (with Mark Overton)

Commercial dairy production on medieval English demesnes: the case of Norfolk

Measuring the commercialisation of seigneurial agriculture circa 1300

Matching supply to demand: crop production and disposal by English demesnes in the century of the Black Death

Constraint or constrained? changing perspectives on medieval English agriculture

Index

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