Author: Raftis, J.A.
Title: Peasant Economic Development within the English Manorial System.
Description: Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996. Orig. cloth binding. Dustjacket. viii. 243 pp. Index. Mailorder only - Alleen verzending mogelijk. Book condition : as new. FROM THE PUBLISHER : Challenging a hundred-year tradition that English peasants were serfs at the disposal of their lord, J.A. Raftis argues that tenants were in considerable control of the manorial regime and were able to take advantage of what most scholars have considered to be exploitive and negative aspects of the medieval agricultural economy. Offering a revisionist theory that shifts the focus from labour services required by the lord to capital required by the customary tenant, Raftis reveals that peasant economic development and manorial economy are not mutually exclusive terms. Using account rolls, charters, court rolls, and lay subsidy rolls, he demonstrates that lords subordinated their power to tax and to extract labour services to a policy of capital maintenance. This breakthrough allows him to develop a more rational explanation for the growth of markets and wealth in a countryside not exclusively dependent on the economy of lords. Peasant Economic Development within the English Manorial System is a ground-breaking analysis that redefines the social and economic history of rural medieval England and changes the direction of medieval scholarship. ISBN 9780773514034.

Keywords: HISTORY, medieval studies