Economic And Social History Of The Middle Ages

First published in 2005. This original study the author writing in 1936 has tried to sketch the character and general movement of the economic and social evolution of Western Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the middle of the fifteenth century.

This book examines the most important themes in European social and economic history from the beginning of growth around the year 1000 to the first wave of global exchange in the 1490s. These five hundred years witnessed the rise of economic systems, such as capitalism, and the social theories that would have a profound influence on the rest of the world over the next five centuries. The basic story, the human search for food, clothing, and shelter in a world of violence and scarcity, is a familiar one, and the work and daily routines of ordinary women and men are the focus of this volume. Surveying the full extent of Europe, from east to west and north to south, Steven Epstein illuminates family life, economic and social thought, war, technologies, and other major themes while giving equal attention to developments in trade, crafts, and agriculture. The great waves of famine and then plague in the fourteenth century provide the centerpiece of a book that seeks to explain the causes of Europe's uneven prosperity and its response to catastrophic levels of death. Epstein also sets social and economic developments within the context of the Christian culture and values that were common across Europe and that were in constant tension with Muslims, Jews, and dissidents within its boundaries and the great Islamic and Tartar states on its frontier.

This excellent and concise summary of the social and economic history of Europe in the Middle Ages examines the changing patterns and developments in agriculture, commerce, trade, industry and transport that took place during the millennium between the fall of the Roman Empire and the discovery of the New World. After outlining the trends in demography, prices, rent, and wages and in the patterns of settlement and cultivation, the author also summarizes the basic research done in the last twenty-five years in many aspects of the social and economic history of medieval Europe, citing French, German and Italian works as well as English. Significantly, this study surveys the present state of discussion on a number of on unresolved issues and controversies, and in some areas suggests common sense answers. Some of the problems of economic growth, or the lack of it, are looked at in the light of current theories in sociology and economic thought. This classic text, first published in 1972, makes a useful and interesting general introduction for students of medieval and economic history.

France under Philip the Fair (1285-1314) and the last Capetians (1314-1328) -- Background of the hundred years' war. Wool and wine. The conflict between France and England over the cloth trade of Flanders and wine production in Gascony -- First period of the Hundred Years' War (1337-1380) -- Town leagues in Germany -- The Hanseatic league -- The Teutonic Knights in Prussia and the Baltic lands -- The commerce and industry of southern Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- Eastern Europe- Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Wallachia and Moldavia -- Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- The Florentine woollen industry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- The fiscal and economic policy of the papacy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- Second period of the Hundred Years' War (1380-1453) -- Flanders under the dukes of Burgundy (1369-1477) -- Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- The Balkan peninsula, Greece and the Levant -- The black death --The gilds and the formation of the patriciate in the towns. The proletariate and the conflict of classes -- Banking during the renaissance -- The origin of modern business methods -- France at the end of the middle ages (1461-1515) -- Germany, Italy and Spain at the end of the middle ages -- On the threshold of modern times.