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18962 results in Cambridge Histories

Page 936 of 949

  • Chapter III - The Evolution of Agricultural Technique

  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 125-179

  • Summary

    The evolution of agricultural technique in the Middle Ages can be divided into three main phases: from the fifth to the tenth centuries, eleventh century and early fourteenth century. The great agricultural novelty of the Middle Ages in Western Europe was the three-course rotation, which developed either from the Mediterranean two-course or from systems of temporary cropping. Probably textile plants were widespread in all Western Europe before the destruction of the Roman Empire. The cultivation of plants for dye wares, dyers' weed, woad, madder, saffron, and that of teazels, developed side by side with the textile industries. The Romans had introduced more method and continuity into their selections and crossings of breeds. During the long and confused centuries between the fall of the Western Empire and the dawn of modern times agriculture developed widely and powerfully in temperate Europe. It was based on processes and implements inherited from the ancient world.

  • §6 - Russia

  • from Chapter VII - Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 507-547

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the medieval agrarian history of Russia. Most rural settlements were hamlets. The archaeological evidence from rural settlements seems to indicate medium- or large-sized open settlements, or, towards the steppe frontier, more densely settled fortified settlements which acted as places of refuge. The main farming tillage implements were the ard (ralo), sokha, and the plough. Ard and sokha may be used in the slash and burn system of farming; the same implements, but especially the soled ards and sokhi with low-angle share beams capable of turning a slice, may be used in the shifting system, the fallowing system, where a bare fallow regularly entered the scheme of rotation. Regional variations, as well as the more important economic developments led to certain modifications in social relations; nevertheless, the social situation throughout the area had many common elements.

  • §3 - Spain

  • from Chapter VII - Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 432-448

  • Summary

    A glance at the topographical and meteorological characteristics of the Iberian Peninsula is the first prerequisite of the study of Spanish economic history. The differentiation of social and economic phenomena of Spain arising from isolation and separatism, accentuated by the varied and shifting patterns of political control, present serious obstacles to a comprehensive survey of agrarian conditions. Information on the study of the character, efficiency, and well-being of agricultural workers topics appears as byproducts of work primarily concerned with medieval property rights, land tenure, and legal institutions. The various arrangements for appropriating land were in large part products of Spain's unique role in making Europe safe for Christianity. An important chapter in Spanish agrarian history is the relation between agriculture and grazing. The merino sheep, Spain's great contribution to international trade and to the pastoral industry of the world, were probably introduced from Africa in the twelfth century.

  • Chapter VI - The Rise of Dependent Cultivation and Seignorial Institutions

  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 235-290

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the origins of the rural seigneurie in Western and Central Europe to form as clear an idea as possible of what it was like when fully developed. The seignorial system, or the manorial system, was not based on slavery. The Frankish immunity, seems to have been granted almost exclusively to churches. Relationships of commendation were able to give to an existing seignorial system immense expansive force. The existence of village chiefdoms is clearly attested in Gaul before Caesar and in Germany before the invasions. In the medieval seigneurie, a manse was the customary unit of tenure. The primitive occupation of the soil was carried out by patriarchal groups. The conditions of the late Roman era and early Middle Ages led to the coexistence, of manses cultivated by 'free' tenants with the new servile holdings, and linked the demesne, the cultivation of which had been mainly entrusted to slaves, to the holdings by heavy bonds of service.

  • §2. - Italy

  • from Chapter VII - Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 340-431

  • Summary

    Italy, in common with the rest of Europe, progressed through a cycle of economic change in the course of the Middle Ages, is now an established commonplace. Two agrarian systems are the customary and the individualistic, came to dispute the soil of medieval Italy; and to each corresponded different methods, extensive and intensive, of agricultural production. As Italian commerce expanded, so the market grew for the products of Italian farming generally, and agriculture everywhere began to respond to changes in international trade. Rural Italy in the Middle Ages experienced radical change has been recognized since the early days of the Agricultural Revolution. In the history of Europe generally it is traditional and convenient to describe rural society in terms of the villa or manorial system, of its rise in the early Middle Ages and its subsequent supersession by the system of putting estates to farm or working them with wage-labour.

  • Chapter I - The Settlement and Colonization of Europe

    • By Richard Koebner, Late Professor in the Hebrew University of Jersualem and formerly Professor in the University of Breslau
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 1-91

  • Summary

    The evolution of settlement and colonization during the Middle Ages is of historical importance. Settlement on the land helped to bring about that mingling and stratification of the peoples from which the European nations sprang. Decisive incidents in the social evolution of medieval society were intimately associated with economic use of the land. Landownership, which took the form of landlordship and the disposal of the forces of a multitude of dependants, became the basis of personal political power. The princes and other great landowners of Slavonic Central Europe had remained uninfluenced by German rural economy so long as it was characterized by the manorial type of organization. The relation of the townsmen to the land was not quite uniform. Some townsmen were agriculturists, others drawers of agricultural rents. Both types are to be found in other regions in the same period.

  • Chapter IV - Agrarian Institutions of the Germanic Kingdoms from the fifth to the ninth century

  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 180-204

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with the agrarian setups during the period of Germanic kingdoms, from the fifth to the ninth century. In Spain and the South of France, just as in Italy, the Germans found Roman institutions intact and strongly rooted. The Visigothic settlement in Southern Gaul under King Walia took place early in the fifth century. In the oldest Frankish formularies of Angers and Tours it is significant to find still in the enumeration of the appurtenances of an estate the words junctis et subjundis, a clear indication of the great influence of late Roman on early Frankish agrarian institutions. The produce of rural districts was not all consumed in self-sufficing households; some portion was brought to market to be sold there. This meant new possibilities of agrarian development. The lawgiving of the Germanic kings enables us to understand why peasants should transfer themselves from Roman to German lords; there were better economic and social conditions in the Germanic kingdoms.

  • §5 - Poland, Lithuania and Hungary

  • from Chapter VII - Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 487-506

  • Summary

    This chapter presents the agrarian history of Poland, Lithuania and Hungary in the Middle Ages by focusing on the landownership, economic organization of the great estates, the burdens of the rural population, and the colonization under the German law. Post-1386, Lithuania was constantly under Polish influence. Poland and Hungary have many features in common both in their political and in their economic structure. In Lithuania, the economic organization of the great estates is found to be in the main similar to that which prevailed in Poland, only that in the former country the characteristic forms appeared a few centuries later. In Poland, the burdening of the rural population with imposts and duties was the most important change in the social structure brought about by the rise of large estates. Again, in Poland, the system of villages under Polish law gave way in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to colonization under German law.

  • Chapter II - Agriculture and Rural Life in the Later Roman Empire

  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 92-124

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with the agricultural and rural life in the later Roman empire. The relative scarcity of stock-raising land had more than one effect upon ancient life; it affected, for instance, the diet. The chapter discusses the social consequences of the dry farming and irrigatory methods of agriculture which are characteristic of large portions of the Roman Empire. In the Roman Empire rights existed (or at least jurists proclaimed that they existed) on provincial soil because their recipients were precarious grantees of the Roman government. The supremacy of the state and the suspicions of the central government kept company law backward in the Roman world, so that no facilities existed for joint-stock agricultural enterprises or agricultural banks. Explorations in the Decapolis show the ordinary population dwelling in well-built houses of squared stone, and in Asia Minor, the monumental evidences of the later Roman Empire argue a standard of life higher at least than that of the modern Turkish village.

  • §4 - The lands east of the Elbe and German colonization eastwards

  • from Chapter VII - Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 449-486

  • Summary

    This chapter talks about the lands to the east of the Elbe and the German colonization eastwards. During the later Middle Ages, from the twelfth century onwards, rural economy of Central and North-eastern Europe was transformed, mainly as a result of German immigration. Existing developments were caught up and absorbed into the transformation. But the East German rural colonizing process, which gave direction, form and power to it, was only part of the wider so-called German East Movement. The internal colonization of Germany had furnished varying, but well-tested, types of field, of village and of law. Urban life had gradually developed to a point at which the main lines of town layout and town law were established. Surveying the course of events in the agrarian history of the lands east of the Elbe from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, what first strikes one is the extraordinary extension of the cultivated area, which was accompanied by a growth of population.

  • Chapter V - Agrarian conditions in the Byzantine Empire in the Middle Ages

  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 205-234

  • Summary

    The eastern half of the Roman Empire was economically stronger and more thickly populated than the western half. The predominating feature of rural economy in the early Byzantine period was the great private estate. This chapter lays special emphasis on the fact that in the Byzantine Empire, property and land were always hereditary and individual possessions. Emperor Heraclius turned the course of Byzantine agrarian development into fresh channels. In the middle Byzantine period, the free and freely moving peasantry is the chief factor in agrarian development. The Byzantine emperors imposed a legislation to protect the small landowner from being bought out by the 'powerful' and at the same time to prevent further subdivision. The agrarian history of the late Byzantine period is that of great landowners and their dependants. The course taken by Byzantine agrarian history provides the key to the understanding of the whole historical evolution of Byzantium.

  • §7 - England

  • from Chapter VII - Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 548-632

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the medieval agrarian society in England. It focuses on the agricultural land, colonization of the population, manorial estates, the landlords, and the peasants and the villagers. The course of English agriculture in the medieval period was dominated by the history of the land itself, its productivity, its relative abundance or scarcity, its use and distribution. In the Middle Ages of England, internal colonization went in step with the contemporary population trends: as population increased or declined, so settlement expanded and contracted. Some manors did not dominate the countryside as much as others, had fewer functions or a more rudimentary organization and exercised a more remote control over the lives and the lands of the tenants. For a time in the thirteenth century, the economic conditions provided the landlord with both the incentive and the means for maintaining his claims where the claims were still worth maintaining.

  • 1 - RELATIONS WITH ASIA

  • from CHAPTER VIII - EUROPEAN RELATIONS WITH ASIA AND AFRICA
  • Edited by Elliot H. Goodwin
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Modern History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 January 1965, pp 218-236

  • Summary

    Three main developments may be seen in Europe's relations with Asia during this period—the rise of the English East India Company as one of the strongest governments in India, the expansion of English trade further east, and the widening and deepening of European knowledge of Asia. In the struggle for power that followed the disintegration of the Mughal empire the English company emerged as the ruler of the rich and fertile provinces of Bengal and Bihar and succeeded not only in excluding the French from effective participation in Indian politics but also in meeting the challenge of its chief rivals, the Marathas and Mysore. The company was now an Indian power, ruling those provinces on behalf of the Mughal emperor and reforming the administrative system that it found there. If its reforms had the effect of excluding Indians from high office, they also gave rise to a class of Indian landholders endowed with property rights and loyal to its rule. Indian investors were among the purchasers of its bonds to finance its campaigns against Tipu Sultan of Mysore. Indian goods were exported not only to Europe but also in the expansion of British trade to the eastern seas, past Dutch opposition, and to China, thus helping to pay for its rapidly growing tea exports to Europe. Although it was disappointed in its expectations of the profits of empire in India and had to seek the home government's help and submit to a measure of control, the profits of its China trade came to over-shadow its losses elsewhere and it was saved from extinction.

  • CHAPTER XXIV - THE FINAL COALITION AND THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, 1813–15

  • Edited by C. W. Crawley
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Modern History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 January 1965, pp 639-667

  • Summary

    As Napoleon's fortunes declined, those of his enemies rose; and a coalition, destined to be finally victorious, began to emerge in the chaotic winter of 1812–13. While remnants of the Grande Armée stumbled westward out of Russia, Tsar Alexander I decided to pursue Napoleon beyond Russian soil and out across Europe, seeking allies as Russian arms advanced. Prussia became the first by the Treaty of Kalisch of February 1813, which provided for obvious war needs, and promised to restore Prussia to her former proportions. Austria was slower in responding to Russian advances, but Great Britain signed treaties of alliance and subsidy with both Prussia and Russia at Reichenbach in June. Following a fruitless armistice and a singularly barren ‘peace’ conference at Prague they resumed the struggle against Napoleon in August, this tune in the Germanies and with Austria finally in the coalition. After several secondary engagements, the battle of Leipzig, 16–18 October 1813, demonstrated the impressive power of the coalition by smashing Napoleon's position in Central Europe. His last German allies deserted him, and his army of nearly 200,000 was utterly routed, two-thirds of it killed, wounded, sick or captured. Before the end of the year the French had been confined to territory west of the Rhine for the first time since their eruption in 1805.

    The autumn of 1813, so successful in allied military affairs, was a singularly frustrating period for Britain's foreign secretary, Lord Castlereagh. Although his country had been constantly and actively in opposition to Napoleon for years, although she had driven the enemy from Spain, rendered his fleet useless and financed the coalition, scant attention was paid to her counsels by remote allies preoccupied with Napoleon in Central Europe.

Page 936 of 949