Au cours du Moyen-Age tardif et de la période moderne, le transfert et la redistribution des terres qui se faisaient auparavant hors marché sont devenus objets de transactions sur marché. Mais cela n'a été en rien un processus général et unilinéaire. Au contraire on observe de fortes différences selon les régions et des discontinuités dans le temps. Nous entendons ici mieux comprendre les facteurs qui furent à l'origine de ces différences en reconstruisant et en analysant les institutions organisant les échanges de terres et de baux. Cette analyse, qui couvre l'Europe du Nord-Ouest et l'Italie, nous indique que le contexte socio-politique a joué un rôle déterminant dans cette organisation.

In the course of the late Middle Ages and early modern period, in Western Europe, ways of transferring and redistributing land outside the market were replaced by market transactions. This, however, was by no means a general and unilinear process, but one that displays strong regional differences and temporal discontinuities. This article aims to gain more insight in the factors underlying these differences, by reconstructing and analysing the institutional organization of exchange in land and lease markets. The analysis, undertaken for northwestern Europe and Italy, points to the socio-political context as a main determinant of this organization.

Recent research on the development of peasant land markets and transfer patterns for central and east-central Europe concentrated on the early modern period. For the late Middle Ages, rural history still relies on older approaches studying the general development of ‘agrarian structure’ (Agrarverfassung) and peasant ‘inheritance’. This article seeks to establish the basis for a more systematic analysis of the formation and general development of peasant land markets in late medieval central and east-central Europe in a comparative perspective. Apart from changes weakening traditional manorial structures, secure peasant property rights of hereditary tenure developed and prevailed by the later Middle Ages. Possible institutional rigidities of transactions with peasant farmland, whose effects in practice would need further exploration, were undermined by the existence of reserves of land situated outside the measured open fields of peasant farms that could be traded more flexibly. These areas also formed important resources for the establishment of smallholders and cottagers who in turn added to the dynamics of developing peasant land markets. In the final section, the article offers a brief survey of developments during the early modern period and concludes that traditional images of an undermining of peasant property rights and of massive landlord powers due to the rise of ‘demesne lordship’ (Gutsherrschaft) must be seriously questioned, as recent empirical studies highlight enormous regional variation and a dominant pattern of continuity of secure peasant property rights and also indicate considerable land mobility.

China has had very active markets for both the sale and the rental of land since Song times (960–1279), if not longer. By the sixteenth century, most of the institutional arrangements that would characterize these markets until 1949 were in place. These institutions differed sharply from those of emerging land markets in early modern Western Europe: in particular, government played a lesser role in adjudicating disputes over land contracts, and customary arrangements included features that (a) gave some sellers of land claims on purchasers that could last for many years and (b) gave some tenants, especially in South and East China, very strong usufruct rights, which themselves became a form of tradable property. However, despite these and other differences from Western models, Chinese land markets were quite efficient, and provided the incentives needed for a very productive agriculture; secure tenants, for instance, responded to their strong position by behaving like owners and investing heavily in improving the land.

Based on archival research in several Italian city-states, this article examines medieval prison life, its attendant pains, and inmate coping strategies by substantially engaging the variety of scholarship on modern incarceration. It demonstrates the limited degree to which current hardships overlap with those of earlier forms of captivity, and underscores the diversity of inmates' social positions in both eras. Medieval prisoners were marginalized, but they avoided social liminality (a major present-day risk) largely thanks to their visibility, accessibility, and frequent interaction with free society.

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War a variety of commentators in England expressed concern that men returning from the war had become so brutalized and inured to violence that their behaviour would continue to be violent at home. But, while the stage was set for a ‘moral panic’ with the brutalized veteran as the new folk devil, no such panic materialized. This essay makes a detailed study of two contrasting newspapers to assess how violent crime was assessed and interpreted after the war. It notes an increase in the use of the concept of the ‘unwritten law’ (the traditional ‘right’ claimed by many men to chastise a disrespectful wife or a man who despoiled or dishonoured a wife) in the courts and the press, probably as an element in re-establishing pre-war gender roles. It also describes how the idea of shell-shock was deployed as a defence in criminal cases, something that probably contributed to a popular recognition that men might suffer mental breakdowns as easily as women. In conclusion, it suggests some of the factors that may have inhibited the press in identifying the violent veteran as a new folk devil.