Comparative Study in the Barnyard

¹ Debate on the matter continues in economic anthropology. See Cook, Scott, “Structural Substantivism: a Critical Review of Marshall Sahlins' Stone Age Economics,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, XVI (June 1974), 355–79.

² “On Medieval History as a Social Study,” Economica, New Series, No. 1 (February 1934), 13–27.

³ “L'histoire immobile,” Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (May-June 1974), 673–92.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Postan, M. M. and Titow, J., “Heriots and Prices on Winchester Manors,” Economic History Review, 2nd Series, XI (1959), 392–411.

⁶ Titow, J. Z., Winchester Yields. A Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 1–4, 12–33, and Appendices. The question of soil exhaustion was first raised by W. Denton, who rejected Thorold Rogers’ favorable views of the medieval economy, using Rogers’ wage data to point to a secular decline in population from 1315 and questioning Rogers’ assumption that wage-earners had enough employment to get an adequate yearround living. See , Denton'sEngland in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1888). William Cunningham in the later editions of his The Growth of English Industry and Commerce During the Early and Middle Ages (first published in 1882) picked up both points but did not allow them to cloud his more optimistic view.

⁷ My information on the general state of plague research is from Ronald Lee of the University of Michigan Population Studies Center.

⁸ Shrewsbury, J. F. D., A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 133, 146.

⁹ From computerized research by Robert Gottfried of the University of Michigan.

¹⁰ Translated by Postan, Cynthia, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1968).

¹¹ Gras, N. S. B. was the first to follow up this problem, in his The Evolution of the English Corn Market (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1915). His technique in the medieval research has been criticized but not his theory.

¹² Hallam, H. E., Settlement and Society. A Study of the Early Agrarian History of South Lincolnshire (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).

¹³ Raftis, J. Ambrose, Tenure and Mobility. Studies in the Social History of the Medieval English Village (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1964), represents interests which Raftis is expanding.

¹⁴ Hatcher, John, Rural Economy and Society in the Duchy of Cornwall, 1300–1500 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

¹⁵ On her differences with Postan on the extent of this see Carus-Wilson, E. M., Medieval Merchant Venturers (London: Methuen, 1965), p. 261, n. 3.

¹⁶ Several develoment model do of course deal with options and their statistical outcome, notably the Hymer and Resnick model of which Jan de Vries makes use in his The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).