The Peasants of Ottobeuren, 1487–1726
The Peasants of Ottobeuren, 1487–1726
Focusing on the lands of the Benedictine monastery of Ottobeuren and based on a mass of archival data, this study presents a detailed reconstruction of peasant society in early modern Germany. It argues that the German rural economy performed much better than has previously been believed. The Ottobeuren peasantry generated large agricultural surpluses, became progressively more active in land and credit markets, and traded in ever wider circuits of commerce. Their peasant society is shown therefore to have been stable economically, and surprisingly resilient to war, plague and famine.
- A detailed reconstruction of the actual workings of the German peasant economy
- Provides answers to the social impact of the Thirty Years War, including the economics and politics of reconstruction and post-war immigration
- A rare investigation into the early modern European economy which provides hard data for rural society during the 'crisis of the seventeenth century'
Reviews & endorsements
"Sreenivasan's sophisticated book emerged from many years of labor. Replete with staistics (almost numbingly so), it gains life from compellingly told stories of individuals and families participating in markets, shaping the early modern world in a far more direct way than most scholars of early modern Europe have ever imagined."Renaissance Quarterly W. David Myers, Fordham University
"This is a historiographical bouillabaisse with many ingredients...it provides a rich interpretive broth with many a good empirical tidbit...[Sreenivasan] has presented a centuries-encompassing synthesis that reveals a larger picture previously unseen."
William W. Hagen, Journal of Modern History
Product details
October 2007Paperback
9780521044585
412 pages
228 × 152 × 25 mm
0.619kg
2 maps
Available
Table of Contents
- List of figures
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Note on weights, measures and currencies
- Introduction
- 1. Right and might (c.1480–c.1560)
- 2. The discrete society (c.1480–c.1560)
- 3. A crisis of numbers? (c.1560–c.1630)
- 4. Integrity and the market (c.1560–c.1630)
- 5. Living on borrowed time (c.1560–c.1630)
- 6. To empty and to refill (c.1630–c.1720)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index of places
- General index.
