Agricultural History Review, Volume 63 Part 1 (2015), p. 180

While English economic history remains in the doldrums, falling into a gap between the fashion for social and cultural history on the one hand and the application of economic models to historical examples on the other, classic economic history continues to thrive in continental Europe. This volume brings together promising young scholars from Spain and Belgium working on the rural economies of late medieval Valencia and Flanders, with additional contributions from two more experienced historians of England. The ‘rural elites’ with which these studies are concerned are peasant elites; and the ‘economic differentiation’ is that which can be observed within particular village communities. A strength of the volume is the range of perspectives and approaches represented. With regard to Valencia, Vicent Baydal and Ferran Esquilache look at the extent of differentiation within corporate Muslim villages; Vicent Royo examines a region dominated by livestock farming; and Frederic Aparisi considers the links between notaries and the peasant elite. For Flanders Lies Vervaet examines different forms of leaseholding; Kristof Dombrecht studies funeral arrangements as a measure of social inequality; Eline van Onacker identifies the Campine area with its extensive tracts of common land as a region where social differentiation was limited, while Maïka de Keyzer looks at how the commons were regulated in the same region. Miriam Müller contributes a study comparing landholding structures in various English manors, while Chris Dyer provides a conclusion.

The volume is not without its problems. Little editing appears to have been undertaken. The text is littered with mistakes of spelling and grammar. Figures are misnumbered and in one case duplicated. Names are misspelt and mistaken. The bibliographical format is inconsistent. Punctuation is missing. There are long quotations in French and Latin with no translation provided. Perhaps more significantly, there seems to have been little editorial control of the contents, and the chapters are variable in quality. The introduction starts with the misleading premise that social differentiation within peasant communities has received little attention, before moving on to acknowledge that it is a long-standing theme in the English-language literature. However, this still ignores the significant international debates within Peasant Studies from Marx and Chayanov onwards, despite the fact this is mentioned in at least one of the chapters. This is a shame, as these shortcomings make the volume unsuitable for recommending to undergraduates. Nonetheless, specialists conducting their own studies of social differentiation in village communities and those interested in comparative approaches to pre-modern rural society will find much of value. The strongest chapters, such as those by Aparisi, Vervaet, van Onacker and de Keyser contain substantial new research, soundly anchored in existing debates, but offering unique perspectives. Aparisi uses an extensive set of early fifteenth-century notarial notebooks kept by Antoni Ferrando, a notary of peasant stock, to illuminate the social and economic networks of rural society. This is a world of commercial transactions, money-lending and frequent movement between country and town, where social links were maintained over relatively long distances. Vervaet offers a corrective to the accepted view of leaseholders as the forefront of agrarian capitalism, showing that large leaseholders in coastal Flanders often paid rents in kind to provide institutional landlords with a food supply, while landlords tolerated sub-economic rents to secure the stability and loyalty of reliable large tenants. The work of van Onacker and de Keyser overlaps to an extent, both concentrating on the Campine region, an area of sandy soils dominated by extensive tracts of common land. The Campine, despite its location surrounded by some of the most densely populated and highly commercialised regions of sixteenth century Europe, retained its open and lightly regulated commons up until the eighteenth century. The relative lack of social differentiation, and of landlord interference, in these communities provide an interesting counter-example against the dominant story of increased social polarisation and privatization of property in this period elsewhere in early modern Europe. Dyer’s conclusion, which in fact makes a useful introduction to the volume, helpfully pulls together themes raised by the volume: how can the village elite be defined, when and why do they emerge, what is the role of commercialisation, and how did such elites move beyond the confines of village society? Thus, if you are willing to tolerate its idiosyncrasies, there are plenty of new insights into late medieval society to be gained from this volume.