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Population Movement and Agrarian Depression in the Later Middle Ages*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

K. F. Helleiner
K. F. Helleiner*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

If it be true that every generation selects and reads historical evidence in the light of its own aspirations and anxieties, one should expect one's contemporaries to take some interest in, and show sympathetic understanding for, periods of social stresses and strains. Having passed through three and a half decades of political and economic upheavals, and having little reason for believing that the time of troubles has come to an end, this generation is likely to feel some affinity with past epochs that appear to have suffered from similar symptoms of a deep-rooted social malaise. Perhaps the historian may derive some comfort from the knowledge that his age is not unique in having to contend with what, in moments of despair, appears to be an adverse trend of a secular nature.

At one time or another during his studies every economic historian must have come up against questions that should have shocked him into a realization of the vast methodological difficulties of his subject. If, as the theorists insist, inter-personal comparisons of utility are illegitimate, how can the historian justify his practice of using such concepts as group welfare? If he cannot form aggregates, how can he hope to be able to compare the wealth of nations at different times? But even assuming that such comparisons were possible: do we have properly defined criteria of economic growth and decline, or of prosperity and depression? And if not, are we entitled to use these and similar ill-defined terms for the purpose of characterizing and contrasting different periods of economic history?

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , August 1949 , pp. 368 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1949

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Halifax, June 9, 1949.

References

1 Robbins, Lionel, “Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility” (Economic Journal, vol. XLVIII, 1938, pp. 635 ff.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For a brilliant, but only partially successful attempt to resolve this difficulty, see Boulding, Kenneth E., “Equilibrium and Wealth” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. V, 1939, pp. 1 ff.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 E.g., Postan, M., “Revisions in Economic History: The Fifteenth Century” (Economic History Review, vol. IX, 1938/1939, pp. 160 ff.).Google Scholar

4 The progress of clearing in medieval Europe has been described in outline by Koebner, Richard in The Cambridge Economic History, vol. I (Cambridge, 1941), chap. IGoogle Scholar: “The Settlement and Colonization of Europe.”

5 Burrows, Montagu, Cinque Ports (2nd ed., London, 1888), pp. 13 ff.Google Scholar

6 Parain, Charles, “The Evolution of Agricultural Technique” (Cambridge Economic History, vol. I, chap. III).Google Scholar

7 See Thompson, James Westfall, Feudal Germany (Chicago, 1928), part IIGoogle Scholar: “New East Frontier Colonial Germany,” and Aubin, Hermann, “The Lands East of the Elbe and German Colonization Eastwards” (Cambridge Economic History, vol. I, chap. VII, § 7).Google Scholar

8 Schumpeter, Joseph A., “The Creative Response in Economic History” (Journal of Economic History, vol. VII, pp. 149 ff.).Google Scholar

9 For general information see the article “Die Bevölkerung des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit bis Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts” by Inama-Sternegg, von (+) and Häpke, (Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 4th ed., Jena, , 1924, vol. II, pp. 670 ff.)Google Scholar, and Abel, Wilhelm, “Wachstumsschwankungen mitteleuropäischer Völker seit dem Mittelalter” (Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, vol. CXLII, 1935, pp. 670 ff.).Google Scholar For France: Levasseur, Émile, La Population Française (Paris, 1889), vol. I, p. 169.Google Scholar For the Moselle region: Lamprecht, Karl, Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1886), vol. I, p. 163.Google Scholar For England: Usher, Abbot Payson, An Introduction to the Industrial History of England (Boston, 1920), chap. IVGoogle Scholar: “The Population of England: 1086-1700,” and Brodnitz, G., Englische Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Jena, 1918), vol. I, pp. 61 ff.Google Scholar

10 Usher, , Industrial History of England, p. 95.Google Scholar Professor Usher's conclusions are in agreement with the estimates offered by Rogers, James E. Thorold, “England before and after the Black Death” (Fortnightly Review, vol. III, 1886, pp. 191 ff.)Google Scholar, who maintained that “the population of England and Wales, during the period referred to, could not have exceeded two and a half, and was probably not more than two millions.”

11 Brodnitz, , Englische Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. I, p. 61.Google Scholar

12 Seebohm, F., “The Population of England and Wales before and after the Black Death” (Fortnightly Review, vol. IV, 1866, pp. 87 ff.).Google Scholar

13 Hicks, J. R., The Social Framework (Oxford, 1942), p. 41.Google Scholar

14 Clark, G. N., The Wealth of England from 1496 to 1760 (London, 1946), p. 92.Google Scholar

15 Quesnay's estimate of 24 millions (see Bauer, Stephan, “Zur Entstehung der Physiokratie,” Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, vol. LV, 1890, pp. 113 ff.)Google Scholar, is almost certainly too high. Clark, G. N., The Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1929), p. 9 Google Scholar, puts the French population in 1700 as low as 19 millions.

16 Kötzschke, Rudolph, Grundsüge der deutschen Wirtschaftsgeschichte (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1923), p. 176.Google Scholar

17 Levett, A. Elizabeth and Ballard, A., “The Black Death on the Estates of the See of Winchester” (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, Oxford, 1916, vol. V, pp. 1 ff.).Google Scholar

18 Abel, Wilhelm, Die Wüstungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters (Jena, 1943), pp. 54 ff.Google Scholar

19 Some epidemics reported in contemporary chronicles may not have been the bubonic plague at all. Medieval sources are seldom sufficiently specific about pathological symptoms to permit modern epidemiologists to diagnose the nature of a disease with any certainty. See Zinsser, Hans, Rats, Lice and History (New York, 1935).Google Scholar

20 Aubin, , “Lands East of the Elbe,” p. 367.Google Scholar See also Nabholz, Hans, “Medieval Agrarian Society in Transition” (Cambridge Economic History, vol. I, p. 500).Google Scholar

21 Abel, , Die Wüstungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters, pp. 57 ff.Google Scholar It is conceivable that some of these earlier Wüstungen were caused by the disastrous European famine of the second decade of the fourteenth century, and the epidemics which followed in its wake. See Lucas, Henry S., “The Great European Famine of 1315, 1316, and 1317” (Speculum, vol. V, 1930, pp. 341 ff.).Google Scholar

22 Postan, , “Revisions in Economic History,” p. 161.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., pp. 163 ff.

24 Abel, Die Wüstungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters, has given a critical analysis and summary of the extensive and widely scattered work done by German scholars. On pp. 12 ff. the author also gives a brief survey of some of the non-German literature.

25 Ibid., p. 7.

26 Grund, Alfred, Die Veränderungen der Topographie im Wienerwald und Wiener Becken (Pencks Geographische Abhandlungen, VIII, 1901).Google Scholar The present writer, from his acquaintance with primary Austrian sources, is in a position to confirm, if not any specific percentage figure, at any rate the order of magnitude suggested by this author.

27 English wheat prices show a sharp increase from 1350 to 1352, while the city of Albi in southern France recorded famine prices in 1350 and 1351. (See Usher, Abbot Payson, “Prices of Wheat and Commodity Price Indexes for England, 1259-1930,” Review of Economic Statistics, vol. XIII, 1931, p. 104 Google Scholar, and “The General Course of Wheat Prices in France 1350-1788” Review of Economic Statistics, vol. XII, 1930, p. 162).Google Scholar However, whether these shortages were caused or accentuated by adverse weather conditions is impossible to determine.

28 The vague language of this statement, which is based on Professor Usher's material (see the foregoing footnote) and some additional evidence assembled by Abel, Wilhelm, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur in Mitteleuropa vom 13. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1935), pp. 18 ff.Google Scholar and p. 174, is deliberate: for our evidence must not be pressed too hard. Information is much too scanty, and disturbing influences of an accidental nature (weather, warfare, etc.) are too strong for short-run averages to be really meaningful. The slight upward trend of European wheat prices from 1350 to 1370 which is suggested by our material may have been due to such non-economic disturbances.

29 It should be admitted, though, that adjustments on the demesne might have been carried out more quickly. But while demesne farming was still important in fourteenth-century England, it played only an insignificant role in most parts of France and Western Germany.

30 Bennett, M. K., “British Wheat Yields per Acre for Seven Centuries” (Economic History, A Supplement to the Economic Journal, vol. III, 1935, no. 10, pp. 12 ff.).Google Scholar

31 Ibid., p. 21. Mr. Bennett himself believes that “the trend of medieval English yield was very slowly—almost imperceptibly—upward.”

32 See the literature cited in footnotes 27 and 28; also Abel, , Die Wüstungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters, pp. 78 ff.Google Scholar, and Beveridge, W. H., “The Yield and Price of Corn in the Middle Ages” (Economic History, vol. I, 1927, pp. 155 ff.).Google Scholar

33 Beveridge, , “Yield and Price of Corn in the Middle Ages,” p. 165.Google Scholar Abel, , Agrarkrisen, pp. 31 ff.Google Scholar Abel, , Die Wüstungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters, pp. 78 ff.Google Scholar

34 Dobb, Maurice, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York, 1947), p. 90.Google Scholar