Agricultural History Review, Volume 55 Part 2 (2007), p. 325

This is a book which compares the ‘national historiographies’ (the editor’s phrase) concerning the medieval rural histories of several countries or regions across Europe. What I had expected when I began to read the book was a series of useful essays concerning the current state of knowledge about medieval rural societies across Europe and how that knowledge base had formed over recent decades. The illusion of such a consistent approach was quickly dispelled, however, as the content of the various chapters seemed very much determined by the authors’ respective expertises and sometimes, it appeared, by their obsessions, to the point that what was actually in a chapter often seemed at odds with its title. For example, the chapter written by Christopher Dyer and Phillipp Schofield about the agrarian history of medieval Britain was really only about England (there is a single reference to the large or multiple estates in late medieval Wales and Scotland but nothing else Welsh or Scottish in their chapter); Benoît Cursente’s on the rural history of medieval France was almost solely concerned with southern France (Cursente almost seemed to consider northern France as being ‘done’ and thus, by implication no longer interesting); while Julien Demade’s somewhat polemical (but fascinating) chapter on the medieval countryside in German-language historiography seemed mostly concerned with the contention that Third Reich interests and agenda, particularly over the issue of ‘domination’, have continued an eerie march of the undead through post-war German historiography.

None of the above is meant as severe criticism of this volume. Although the content and perspectives of the various chapters may strike readers as uneven and at times eccentric, there is certainly much to be learned from this book. The chapter by Dyer and Schofield mentioned above did conform most to my preconception of what the book would contain, especially in providing an informative and very valuable overview of recent work on medieval English society from the Anglo-Saxon period to the sixteenth century. The chapters on Spanish (by José Ángel García de Cortázar and Pascual Martínez Sopena) and Italian medieval rural society (by Luigi Provero), two historiographies which lagged behind other countries in Europe, show how much was owed to neighbouring countries, especially France. Pierre Toubert’s encastellamento thesis, for instance, stressing the importance of fortification to rural social development, was important to both Spanish and Italian scholars in developing their views about their respective rural societies during the middle ages. The vibrancy of the new work on medieval rural society is also strongly featured in the volume, particularly in Cursente’s chapter on southern France, where the footnotes bristle with references to new PhD theses, while the recent flurry of academic meetings and conferences in facilitating new information and views about medieval rural society is strikingly displayed in Garcia de Cortázar and Martínez Sopena’s chapter on Spain.

Perhaps, though, the volume is more important for what it says about how these historiographies were formed than about the information and meta narratives contained within them. Outside influences clearly shaped some historiographies (notably that of Spain’s) more than others (English historiography has long been relatively insulated from outside influence, with perhaps the exception of the great French historians, Marc Bloch and Georges Duby). As mentioned above, the Demade chapter takes an admittedly controversial position, but nonetheless brings to our attention the importance of the national and political context in the creation of these historiographies. One spinoff from this that surprised this reviewer was how consensus often seemed most forcefully expressed when actual information was most lacking. This comes through strongly in Piotr Górecki’s excellent chapter on medieval peasants in Polish historiography, especially in the way that the rise of the Piast ducal power during the tenth and eleventh century has been seen to colour virtually all issues of the age, including that of rural society. There is almost a waiting for Godot quality here, as academics discuss various elaborations, all from the same scant evidential base, in expectation of the next seam of information (from wherever!) or perhaps the next great person’s thoughts, before the field can move on to a fundamentally different view. In such intellectual environments, more emotionally charged elements about medieval rural societies can easily take hold, such as the heroic (if futile, according to Malthusian precepts) and surprisingly technically-oriented struggle for improvement in physical well-being, the clash between lords and peasants, the spirit of the ‘frontier’ (and its reaction, as in the ambivalence concerning Germanic settlement of the east, particularly prevalent in Polish historiography). The marked degree to which the emotional quotient subsides when considering early modern rural societies in western Europe, yet continues with arguably renewed vigour for this later period in eastern Europe (as perhaps most forcefully expressed in the Brenner debate of the late 1970s and early 1980s, to which curiously only the Dyer/Schofield chapter refers) signifies a major geographical fault line between eastern and western Europe in the consideration of their medieval and early modern rural societies. Nor has this fault line been driven solely by the ‘facts’, but also according to the emotional and political considerations existing within the various parts of Europe that have always had a much more important impact on history than the discipline likes to admit. Although this volume never articulates this in such a pointed way (Demade comes closest, as does Alfonso in her somewhat bemused introductory remarks concerning the directions that the various chapters took – like herding cats), the sheer unpredictability of how societies come to view and shape their histories is abundantly clear and forms a large part of the charm of this volume.