Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 1 (2011), p. 130

This very welcome book contains a stimulating collection of 21 articles by Richard Britnell, all previously been published in a variety of edited volumes and journals between 1968 and 2001. In addition the volume contains a short, previously unpublished paper entitled ‘Urban economic regulation and economic morality in medieval England’.

The articles presented in this volume combine in an attempt to move away from the rather dichotomised interpretations of economic and social development in later medieval England of primarily Malthusian and Marxist perspectives. Instead the essays support Britnell’s view of a commercialising society. It is argued that this long-term development of commercialisation, in this collection from c.1050 until 1550, is expressed in trade, the growth of markets and other commercial institutions as well as their various social consequences. Britnell argues that taken together these can be seen to have ‘contributed directly to the institutional structure of the modern world’ (p. xi).

In reflecting these concerns, the essays in this volume examine various aspects of commercialisation. They therefore explore towns, markets, long and short distance trade, aspects of the regulation of trading activities alongside questions of consumption, demand and estate management. As such the collection offers a satisfying mix of detailed studies, like for example ‘The making of Witham’, ‘The Pastons and their Norfolk’ or ‘Forstall, forestalling and the Statute of Forestallers’ on the one hand, and papers taking a more sweeping and long-term view, like the excellent ‘Commercialisation and economic development in England, 1000–1300’, or the thought-provoking ‘Commerce and capitalism in late medieval England: problems of description and theory’ on the other.

It is particularly nice to have the two essays comparing towns and the economies of England and northern Italy in the fourteenth century together in this volume. ‘England and northern Italy in the early fourteenth century: the economic contrasts’ offers a wide-ranging and insightful comparison between various aspects of the two economies, rightly taking agricultural as well as other local peculiarities into consideration in seeking to explain differing levels of enterprise, long-distance trade and banking. ‘The towns of England and northern Italy in the early fourteenth century’, highlights not only some of the problems arising from comparative work, but also how fruitful such an analysis can be in sketching out the key differences and similarities, and the effect such differences had upon the wider economy.

Such collections of essays are always useful and welcome as rooting through volumes of journals for individual articles can be avoided, and this makes them very helpful for undergraduate teaching.

Two criticisms are to be made of this book. The first is the pronounced concentration on England in the articles. Although the volume’s title promises a European perspective, most of the papers in this volume concern primarily English markets, towns and trade. One, ‘Local trade, remote trade: institutions, information and market integration, 1050–1330’ does take a wider European perspective, and, as mentioned, two compare English and Italian economies and towns.

The second criticism is entirely editorial. The layout of the Variorum Collected Studies series by Ashgate, can be trying and at times distracting, which is unfortunate for a book which is priced at £85. The published papers are not given a continuous pagination and instead articles are numbered by Roman numerals with original page numbers left intact. In addition font and text layout are not harmonised throughout the volume, and the font of some individual articles, like the ‘Burghal characteristics of market towns in medieval England’ are so small, that this reviewer found them difficult to read.

These criticisms however, do not distract from the importance of the essays presented in this stimulating volume.