Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
General Characteristics of the Period
Historiography
Before the Second World War agrarian history was invariably treated either as a legal or as a technically agricultural study. The first method concerned itself with the legal status of the various groups (freemen, ministeriales, villeins, etc.) and the laws pertaining to villeinage and common land (Marken). In Austria and Germany Dopsch and von Below fiercely debated the subject of land tenure in Germanic times; in England, successive generations of scholars tackled with untiring vigour the problems of the manorial system.
The legal approach had a number of disadvantages. The field of research was almost entirely limited to the Middle Ages. The economic aspects of the manorial system and of the use of common land were ignored. No account was taken of the fact that history is concerned with what was once a living reality, people of flesh and blood. Marc Bloch's somewhat disdainful comment is applicable to these legal historians: ‘ces érudits pour qui le paysan d'autrefois ne semble avoir existé qu'afin de fournir l'occasion de plaisantes dissertations juridiques’. The basic objection to this legally orientated agrarian history is that it starts with extensive chapters on the Germanic and Carolingian periods, continues until the end of villeinage after 1300, and comes to an end about 1500.
The agricultural line of investigation generally confines itself to the history of crops, crop rotation systems, breeds of cattle or agricultural implements and machines. This kind of technical history often provides little more than a collection of unrelated facts. Except for the atypical phenomena of the so-called ‘Agricultural Revolution’ in eastern England, they refer almost exclusively to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.