Town and Country in Medieval North Western Europe
Town and Country in Medieval North Western Europe

Author: Alexis Wilkin

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782503533872

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This volume explores the relationships and interactions between medieval urban populations and their rural counterparts across north western Europe from the seventh to sixteenth centuries. This theme has become increasingly fragmented in recent decades, resulting in scholars being largely unaware of developments outside their own areas. The present volume brings together historians and archaeologists in order to highlight the varied ways in which town-country interactions can be considered, from perspectives that include economy, politics, natural environment, material culture, and settlement hierarchy. As a whole, the papers offer innovative interdisciplinary perspectives on the topic that create a new platform from which to understand more fully the complex, bilateral relationships in which both urban and rural spheres were able to influence and challenge each other. Contributions are wide-ranging, from the activities of elite, aristocratic groups in and around individual towns, to large-scale surveys covering wide areas. With coverage from the North Sea to the western Baltic, the book will be relevant to a range of disciplines including archaeology, history, and geography, and is aimed towards both advanced students and established scholars.

Settlement Change Across Medieval Europe
Settlement Change Across Medieval Europe

Author: Niall Brady

Publisher: Ruralia

Published: 2019-09-09

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9789088908064

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Innovations, transmissions and transformations had profound spatial, economic and social impacts on the environments, landscapes and habitats evident at micro- and macro-levels. This volume explores how these changes affected how land was worked, how it was organized, and the nature of buildings and rural complexes.

Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West
Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West

Author: Georges Duby

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 1998-01-29

Total Pages: 634

ISBN-13: 9780812216745

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"One of the most important, imaginative, solidly documented, well written books of medieval history that I have ever read. . . . It offers a unique combination of synthetic power and analytic perception, of bold judgment and Cartesian doubt, of hard economic facts and subtle psychological considerations."--

The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life
The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life

Author: Miriam Müller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 1000450732

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The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life brings together the latest research on peasantry in medieval Europe. The aim is to place peasants – as small-scale agricultural producers – firmly at the centre of this volume, as people with agency, immense skill and resilience to shape their environments, cultures and societies. This volume examines the changes and evolutions within village societies across the medieval period, over a broad chronology and across a wide geography. Rural structures, families and hierarchies are examined alongside tool use and trade, as well as the impact of external factors such as famine and the Black Death. The contributions offer insights into multidisciplinary research, incorporating archaeological as well as landscape studies alongside traditional historical documentary approaches across widely differing local and regional contexts across medieval Europe. This book will be an essential reference for scholars and students of medieval history, as well those interested in rural, cultural and social history.

The Countryside in Medieval Europe
The Countryside in Medieval Europe

Author: Danielle Watson

Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC

Published: 2016-07-15

Total Pages: 83

ISBN-13: 1502618834

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The Middle Ages saw the rise of feudalism in the European countryside, when most people spent their lives working the land to feed the growing population across the continent. Read about how peasants lived and worked in the medieval village.

Scale and Scale Change in the Early Middle Ages
Scale and Scale Change in the Early Middle Ages

Author: Julio Escalona

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782503532394

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Kings, aristocrats, peasants, and the Church are among the shared features of most early medieval societies. However, these also varied dramatically in time and space. Can petty regional kings, for instance, be compared to those in charge of a whole empire? Scale is a crucial factor in modelling, explaining, and conceptualizing the past. Furthermore, many issues that historians and archaeologists treat independently can be theorized together as processes of scale decrease or increase: the appearance of complex societies, the rise and collapse of empires, changing world-systems, and globalization. While a subject of much discussion in fields such as ecology, geography, and sociology, scale is rarely theorized by archaeologists and historians. This book highlights the potential of the concepts of scale and scale change for comparing and explaining medieval socio-spatial processes. It integrates regional and temporal variations in the fragmentation of the Roman world and the emergence of medieval polities, which are often handled separately by late antique and early medieval specialists. The result of a three-year research project, the nine case studies in this volume offer fresh insights into early medieval rural society while combining their individual subjects to generate a wider explanatory framework.

Life in a Medieval Village
Life in a Medieval Village

Author: Frances Gies

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-09-07

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0062016687

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The reissue of Joseph and Frances Gies’s classic bestseller on life in medieval villages. This new reissue of Life in a Medieval Village, by respected historians Joseph and Frances Gies, paints a lively, convincing portrait of rural people at work and at play in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the village of Elton, in the English East Midlands, the Gieses detail the agricultural advances that made communal living possible, explain what domestic life was like for serf and lord alike, and describe the central role of the church in maintaining social harmony. Though the main focus is on Elton, c. 1300, the Gieses supply enlightening historical context on the origin, development, and decline of the European village, itself an invention of the Middle Ages. Meticulously researched, Life in a Medieval Village is a remarkable account that illustrates the captivating world of the Middle Ages and demonstrates what it was like to live during a fascinating—and often misunderstood—era.

Everyday Life in Medieval England
Everyday Life in Medieval England

Author: Christopher Dyer

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2001-01-01

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0826419828

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Everyday Life in Medieval England captures the day-to-day experience of people in the middle ages - the houses and settlements in which they lived, the food they ate, their getting and spending - and their social relationships. The picture that emerges is of great variety, of constant change, of movement and of enterprise. Many people were downtrodden and miserably poor, but they struggled against their circumstances, resisting oppressive authorities, to build their own way of life and to improve their material conditions. The ordinary men and women of the middle ages appear throughout. Everyday life in Medieval England is an outstanding contribution to both national and local history.

Land and Credit
Land and Credit

Author: Chris Briggs

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-02-27

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 3319662090

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This volume investigates the use of mortgages in the European countryside between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. A mortgage allowed a loan to be secured with land or other property, and the practice has been linked to the transformation of the agrarian economy that paved the way for modern economic growth. Historians have viewed the mortgage both positively and negatively: on the one hand, it provided borrowers with opportunities for investment in agriculture; but equally, it exposed them to the risk of losing their mortgaged property. The case studies presented in this volume reveal the variety of forms that the mortgage took, and show how an intricate balance was struck between the interests of the borrower looking for funds, and those of the lender looking for security. It is argued that the character of mortgage law, and the nature of rights in land in operation in any given the place and period, determined the degree to which mortgages were employed. Over time, developments in these factors allowed increasing numbers of peasants to use mortgages more freely, and with a decreasing risk of expropriation. This volume will be appealing to academics and researchers interested in financial history, rural credit and debt, and the economic history of agrarian communities.

Village Community and Conflict in Late Medieval Drenthe
Village Community and Conflict in Late Medieval Drenthe

Author: Peter Hoppenbrouwers

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9782503575391

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Village communities were the heart of the medieval countryside. But how did they operate? This book seeks to find some answers to that question by focusing on late medieval Drenthe, a region situated in a remote corner of the Holy Roman Empire and part of the prince-bishopric of Utrecht. Drenthe was an overwhelmingly localized, rural world. It had no cities, and consisted entirely of small villages. The social and economic importance of traditionally privileged sections of medieval society (clergy and nobility) was limited; free peasant landowners were the dominant social class. Based on a careful reading of normative sources (Land charters) and thousands of short verdicts given by the so-called 'Etstoel' or high court of justice in Drenthe, this book focuses on three types of conflict: conflicts between villages, feud-like violence, and litigations about property. These three types coincide with three levels of involvement: that of village communities as a whole, that of kin groups, and that of households. The resulting, comprehensive analysis provides a rigorous interrogation of generalized notions of the pre-industrial rural world, offering a snapshot of a typical peasant society in late medieval Europe.