The Landlord and the Economic Revival of the Middle Ages in Northern Europe, 1000-1250
Ronald G. Witt
ATTEMPTS TO PRESENT a synthetic picture of the economic and social relationships between town country in Middle Ages still tend to be dominated by an assumption class conflict derived either from early liberal or Marxian analyses ancienregime. The medieval is usually presented as antifeudal institution, controlled new men-the merchants-who because their lowly origins suspicious profession find themselves both despised feared nobility, dominating agricultural society. Essentially warrior whose life based on economy almost completely consumptive nature, nobility appears unable adapt expanding use money. Threatened merchants rising below, thirteenth century closing its ranks. Economically, however, this attempt at exclusion little avail: manors are breaking up rights over land men bargained away for cash so necessary pay old debts purchase luxuries. So inauspicious condition 13oo depicted that it quite marvelous European revolutionaries eighteenth nineteenth centuries had ancien regime destroy. Doubtless most systematic presentation class-conflict thesis found numerous works Henri Pirenne. For Pirenne countryside tenth eleventh everywhere.' Small allodial holdings disappeared, rural population was divided basically into serfs big landlords who were nobles clerics. In his opinion society furnish leadership capital commercial revival just beginning get under way these centuries.2 too downtrodden; very success
The American Historical Review