The Agrarian History of England and Wales

The Agrarian History of England and Wales PDF

Author: Edward John T. Collins

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 994

ISBN-13: 9780521329262

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The unifying theme of this volume is the changing role of the countryside in national life, and the impact upon it of the social and economic forces unleashed by industrialisation and the growth of towns.

The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume 2, 1042-1350

The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume 2, 1042-1350 PDF

Author: H. E. Hallam

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1988-12-08

Total Pages: 1128

ISBN-13: 9780521200738

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This 1988 volume deals with the agrarian history of England and Wales from the beginning of the reign of Edward the Confessor to the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348. It divides the counties into regions and deals with each under the headings of new settlements, agriculture and pastoralism (crops and stock), yield ratios and techniques (including field systems, crop nutrition and drainage). There are also sections on the Late Saxon period, Domesday England, wages and prices, vernacular architecture, and the life of the people. The volume as a whole offers a detailed description of trends, both economic and social, between 1042 and 1350 and of the complexities of an economy and society split into many and various sub-economies and sub-societies, all very different from one another but closely knit and interdependent.

The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume 3, 1348-1500

The Agrarian History of England and Wales: Volume 3, 1348-1500 PDF

Author: Edward Miller

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1967

Total Pages: 1036

ISBN-13: 9780521200745

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The third volume of The Agrarian History of England and Wales, which was first published in 1991, deals with the last century and a half of the Middle Ages. It concerns itself with the new demographic and economic circumstances created in large measure by endemic plague.

Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming

Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming PDF

Author: Debby Banham

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-09-25

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0191667315

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Farming was the basis of the wealth that made England worth invading, twice, in the eleventh century, while trade and manufacturing were insignificant by modern standards. In Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming, the authors employ a wide range of evidence to investigate how Anglo-Saxon farmers produced the food and other agricultural products that sustained English economy, society, and culture before the Norman Conquest. The first part of the volume draws on written and pictorial sources, archaeology, place-names, and the history of the English language to discover what crops and livestock people raised, and what tools and techniques were used to produce them. In part two, using a series of landscape studies - place-names, maps, and the landscape itself, the authors explore how these techniques might have been combined into working agricultural regimes in different parts of the country. A picture emerges of an agriculture that changed from an essentially prehistoric state in the sub-Roman period to what was recognisably the beginning of a tradition that only ended with the Second World War. Anglo-Saxon farming was not only sustainable, but infinitely adaptable to different soils and geology, and to a climate changing as unpredictably as it is today.

British Economic Growth, 1270–1870

British Economic Growth, 1270–1870 PDF

Author: Stephen Broadberry

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-01-22

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1316195163

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This is a definitive new account of Britain's economic evolution from a backwater of Europe in 1270 to the hub of the global economy in 1870. A team of leading economic historians reconstruct Britain's national accounts for the first time right back into the thirteenth century to show what really happened quantitatively during the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution. Contrary to traditional views of the earlier period as one of Malthusian stagnation, they reveal how the transition to modern economic growth built on the earlier foundations of a persistent upward trend in GDP per capita which doubled between 1270 and 1700. Featuring comprehensive estimates of population, land use, agricultural production, industrial and service-sector production and GDP per capita, as well as analysis of their implications, this will be an essential reference for anyone interested in British economic history and the origins of modern economic growth more generally.

The Great Famine

The Great Famine PDF

Author: William Chester Jordan

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1997-12-15

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1400822130

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The horrors of the Great Famine (1315-1322), one of the severest catastrophes ever to strike northern Europe, lived on for centuries in the minds of Europeans who recalled tales of widespread hunger, class warfare, epidemic disease, frighteningly high mortality, and unspeakable crimes. Until now, no one has offered a perspective of what daily life was actually like throughout the entire region devastated by this crisis, nor has anyone probed far into its causes. Here, the distinguished historian William Jordan provides the first comprehensive inquiry into the Famine from Ireland to western Poland, from Scandinavia to central France and western Germany. He produces a rich cultural history of medieval community life, drawing his evidence from such sources as meteorological and agricultural records, accounts kept by monasteries providing for the needy, and documentation of military campaigns. Whereas there has been a tendency to describe the food shortages as a result of simply bad weather or else poor economic planning, Jordan sets the stage so that we see the complex interplay of social and environmental factors that caused this particular disaster and allowed it to continue for so long. Jordan begins with a description of medieval northern Europe at its demographic peak around 1300, by which time the region had achieved a sophisticated level of economic integration. He then looks at problems that, when combined with years of inundating rains and brutal winters, gnawed away at economic stability. From animal diseases and harvest failures to volatile prices, class antagonism, and distribution breakdowns brought on by constant war, northern Europeans felt helplessly besieged by acts of an angry God--although a cessation of war and a more equitable distribution of resources might have lessened the severity of the food shortages. Throughout Jordan interweaves vivid historical detail with a sharp analysis of why certain responses to the famine failed. He ultimately shows that while the northern European economy did recover quickly, the Great Famine ushered in a period of social instability that had serious repercussions for generations to come.