English seigniorial agriculture, 1250-1450 / Bruce M.S. Campbell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campbell, B. M. S., author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in historical geography ; 31.

Cambridge studies in historical geography ; 31

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agriculture--England--History.

Agriculture.

Agriculture--Economic aspects--England--History.

Middle Ages.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxvi, 517 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Bruce Campbell's book, first published in 2000, was the first single-authored treatment of medieval English agriculture at a national scale. It deals comprehensively with the cultivation carried out by or for lords on their demesne farms, for which the documentation is more detailed and abundant than for any other agricultural group either during the medieval period or later. A context is thereby assured for all future work on the medieval and early modern agrarian economies. The book also makes a substantive contribution to ongoing historical debates about the dimensions, chronology and causes of the medieval cycle of expansion, crisis and contraction. Topics dealt with include the scale and composition of seigniorial estates, the geography of land-use, pastoral husbandry, arable husbandry, land productivity, levels of commercialization and the size of the population in relation to the consumption of food at any given time.

Contents:

Weights, measures, values, and boundaries

Introduction: agriculture and the late-medieval English economy

The seigniorial and non-seigniorial sectors

The changing economic context of agricultural production

Strategies for raising (and reducing) agricultural output

Risks, dilemmas, and debates

Sources, databases, and typologies

Manorial accounts

IPM extents

Other sources

Methods and databases

Approaches to the analysis of demesnes, estates, and regions

The databases

The scale and composition of the seigniorial sector

The seigniorial share of agricultural output and land-use

The scale and composition of estates

The scale and composition of demesnes

Aggregate value

Arable land-use

Pastoral land-uses

Arable versus pasturage

The relative unit values of grassland and arable

Demesne land-use combinations and their geography

Seigniorial pastoral production

Types of pastoral husbandry

Working animals

Draught-horses

Draught-oxen

Working animals in perspective

Non-working animals

Breeding replacement draught beasts

Cattle-based dairying

Sheep

Swine

Non-working animals in perspective

Animals versus crops

Stocking densities and farming systems

The relative contributions of crops and livestock to gross revenues

Seigniorial arable production

The objectives of production

Sustainability

Consumption

Exchange

The principal field crops and their attributes

Wheat

Rye

Winter mixtures

Barley

Oats.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 471-496) and index.

ISBN:

0-511-52221-5