Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850†“1520

Description

Dramatic social and economic change during the middle ages altered the lives of the people of Britain in far-reaching ways, from the structure of their families to the ways they made their livings. In this masterly book, preeminent medieval historian Christopher Dyer presents a fresh view of the British economy from the ninth to the sixteenth century and a vivid new account of medieval life. He begins his volume with the formation of towns and villages in the ninth and tenth centuries and ends with the inflation, population rise, and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. This is a book about ideas and attitudes as well as the material world, and Dyer shows how people regarded the economy and responded to economic change. He examines the growth of towns, the clearing of lands, the Great Famine, the Black Death, and the upheavals of the fifteenth century through the eyes of those who experienced them. He also explores the dilemmas and decisions of those who were making a living in a changing world—from peasants, artisans, and wage earners to barons and monks. Drawing on archaeological and landscape evidence along with more conventional archives and records, the author offers here an engaging survey of British medieval economic history unrivaled in breadth and clarity. Contents Illustrations Preface Introduction: Approaching the economic history of medieval Britain Part One: Origins of the medieval economy, c.850–c.1100 Chapter One: Living on the land, c.850–c.1050 Chapter Two: Crisis and new directions, c.850–c.1050 Chapter Three: Conquest c.1050–c.1100 Part Two: Expansion and crisis, c.1100–c.1350 Chapter Four: Lords, c.1100–c.1315 Chapter Five: Peasants, c.1100–c.1315 Chapter Six: Towns and commerce, c.1100–c.1315 Chapter Seven: Crisis, c.1290–c.1350 Part Three: Making a new world, c.1350–c.1520 Chapter Eight: The Black Death and its aftermath, c.1348–c.1520 Chapter Nine: Towns, trade and industry, c.1350–c.1520 Chapter Ten: The countryside, c.1350–c.1520 Conclusion Further reading Index