Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death

This is a new collection of essays on agriculture and rural society in the late Middle Ages, in particular following the Black Death. It combines a broad perspective on agrarian issues such as depopulation and social conflict with illustrative material from detailed local and regional research to show how general problems were worked out in specific contexts. The contributors explore the wide regional variety across Europe (which was influenced by climatic differences and broad spatial variables such as levels of urbanisation and commercial infrastructure), yet they argue that a European history is nevertheless possible. They also supply detailed studies from regional British contexts relating to, amongst other issues, the use of the land, the movement of prices, the distribution of property, the organisation of trade and the cohesion of village society. There is new research on several aspects of regional development in medieval England and other European countries: Robert Swanson, a leading authority on the history of the late medieval Church, discusses how the collection of tithes to maintain local clergy in the medieval Church contributed to the commercialisation of trade in grain and other agricultural products; Peter Larson shows how villagers became increasingly prone to violence in the generations following the Black Death, in response to the social upheavals caused by the epidemic. If there is a single overarching idea that gives the collection coherence, it is that trends in agriculture during the late Middle Ages were more varied than has usually been supposed. Taken as a whole, the book supplies a valuable introduction to problems and research methods together with original contributions to knowledge based on current research.