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[Economy]
[Intro ToC ]
[Pictures of Farming]
The Economy of Europe in the Renaissance
Agriculture
Reading
Start with Jensen, Chapter 1, "Manorial Life and Economy." The
picture he draws is too simple, but it will serve as a starting
point.
There's nothing especially medieval in the practices he
describes; that is, nothing that especially marks it from
Renaissance practices. By and large in the West, most of the big
changes in agriculture had already occurred by 1300.
General Comments
Those changes were the replacement of labor services with cash
payments, the conversion of serfs to peasants. Agricultural
techniques, too, changed little between 1200 and 1500. Three-
field rotation in the north, two-field in the south; the wheeled
plow, adopted in the north to turn the heavy soil there;
windmills for power; these and other techniques and tools were in
place by 1300 and were scarcely increased.
In fact, if anything, agriculture saw setbacks. One trend was
enclosure. The practice of usurping peasant farmland in order to
turn it into sheep pasturage became very widespread only in the
16th century, but it had its origins earlier. The loss of
population suffered by Europe hit the West especially hard, and
the Renaissance sees widespread abandonment of marginal acreage.
And, of course, the east saw the steady erosion of peasant
liberty.