Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CHAPTER I The Historical Study of Economic Growth and Decline in Early Modern History
- CHAPTER II Agriculture in the Vital Revolution
- CHAPTER III The European Fisheries in Early Modern History
- CHAPTER IV The Changing Patterns of Trade
- CHAPTER V Monetary, Credit and Banking Systems
- CHAPTER VI The Nature of Enterprise
- CHAPTER VII The Organization of Industrial Production
- CHAPTER VIII Government and Society
- Bibliographies
- Fig. 7. Centres of metal production
- Fig. 8. Centres of textile production
- References
CHAPTER II - Agriculture in the Vital Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- CHAPTER I The Historical Study of Economic Growth and Decline in Early Modern History
- CHAPTER II Agriculture in the Vital Revolution
- CHAPTER III The European Fisheries in Early Modern History
- CHAPTER IV The Changing Patterns of Trade
- CHAPTER V Monetary, Credit and Banking Systems
- CHAPTER VI The Nature of Enterprise
- CHAPTER VII The Organization of Industrial Production
- CHAPTER VIII Government and Society
- Bibliographies
- Fig. 7. Centres of metal production
- Fig. 8. Centres of textile production
- References
Summary
General Characteristics of the Period
Historiography
Before the Second World War agrarian history was invariably treated either as a legal or as a technically agricultural study. The first method concerned itself with the legal status of the various groups (freemen, ministeriales, villeins, etc.) and the laws pertaining to villeinage and common land (Marken). In Austria and Germany Dopsch and von Below fiercely debated the subject of land tenure in Germanic times; in England, successive generations of scholars tackled with untiring vigour the problems of the manorial system.
The legal approach had a number of disadvantages. The field of research was almost entirely limited to the Middle Ages. The economic aspects of the manorial system and of the use of common land were ignored. No account was taken of the fact that history is concerned with what was once a living reality, people of flesh and blood. Marc Bloch's somewhat disdainful comment is applicable to these legal historians: ‘ces érudits pour qui le paysan d'autrefois ne semble avoir existé qu'afin de fournir l'occasion de plaisantes dissertations juridiques’. The basic objection to this legally orientated agrarian history is that it starts with extensive chapters on the Germanic and Carolingian periods, continues until the end of villeinage after 1300, and comes to an end about 1500.
The agricultural line of investigation generally confines itself to the history of crops, crop rotation systems, breeds of cattle or agricultural implements and machines. This kind of technical history often provides little more than a collection of unrelated facts. Except for the atypical phenomena of the so-called ‘Agricultural Revolution’ in eastern England, they refer almost exclusively to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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- The Cambridge Economic History of Europe , pp. 42 - 132Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1977
References
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