The European economy of the Black Death

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- The European economy of the Black Death，文章讲述就像瘟疫造成的死亡人数一样，它的社会经济影响也抵制了严格的衡量标准。黑死病的时机使得它很容易被贴上标签，成为几乎不可避免的欧洲经济史上的分水岭。它到达了一个兴高采烈的中世纪晚期（大约1000到1300年），城市生活重新焕发，长距离商业复兴，商业和制造业创新，庄园农业成熟，人口迅速增长，翻倍或翻了三倍。黑死病同时预示了中世纪后期（约1300年至1500年）经济停滞，萧条。但是，即使接受这种对中世纪经济的简单化和某种误导性描述，将黑死病的经济影响与各种因素隔离开来也是一个艰巨的挑战。

The European economy of the Black Death
Like the plague’s death toll, its socioeconomic impact resists categorical measurement. The Black Death’s timing made a facile labeling of it as a watershed in European economic history nearly inevitable. It arrived near the close of an ebullient high Middle Ages (c. 1000 to c. 1300) in which urban life reemerged, long—distance commerce revived, business and manufacturing innovated, manorial agriculture matured, and population burgeoned, doubling or tripling. The Black Death simultaneously portended an economically stagnant, depressed late Middle Ages (c. 1300 to c. 1500). However, even if this simplistic and somewhat misleading portrait of the medieval economy is accepted, isolating the Black Death’s economic impact from manifold factors at play is a daunting challenge.
Cognizant of a qualitative difference between the high and late Middle Ages, students of medieval economy have offered varied explanations, some mutually exclusive, others not, some favoring the less dramatic, less visible, yet inexorable factor as an agent of change rather than a catastrophic demographic shift. For some, a cooling climate undercut agricultural productivity, a downturn that rippled throughout the predominantly agrarian economy. For others, exploitative political, social, and economic institutions enriched an idle elite and deprived working society of wherewithal and incentive to be innovative and productive. Yet others associate monetary factors with the fourteenth— and fifteenth—century economic doldrums.
The particular concerns of the twentieth century unsurprisingly induced some scholars to view the medieval economy through a Malthusian lens. In this reconstruction of the Middle Ages, population growth pressed against the society’s ability to feed itself by the mid—thirteenth century. Rising impoverishment and contracting holdings compelled the peasant to cultivate inferior, low—fertility land and to convert pasture to arable production and thereby inevitably reduce numbers of livestock and make manure for fertilizer scarcer. Boosting gross productivity in the immediate term yet driving yields of grain downward in the longer term exacerbated the imbalance between population and food supply; redressing the imbalance became inevitable. This idea’s adherents see signs of demographic correction from the mid—thirteenth century onward, possibly arising in part from marriage practices that reduced fertility. A more potent correction came with subsistence crises. Miserable weather in 1315 destroyed crops and the ensuing Great Famine (1315—22) reduced northern Europe’s population by perhaps ten to fifteen percent. Poor harvests, moreover, bedeviled England and Italy to the eve of the Black Death.
These factors — climate, imperfect institutions, monetary imbalances, overpopulation — diminish the Black Death’s role as a transformative socioeconomic event. In other words, socioeconomic changes already driven by other causes would have occurred anyway, merely more slowly, had the plague never struck Europe. This conviction fosters receptiveness to lower estimates of the Black Death’s deadliness. Recent scrutiny of the Malthusian analysis, especially studies of agriculture in source—rich eastern England, has, however, rehabilitated the Black Death as an agent of socioeconomic change. Growing awareness of the use of “progressive” agricultural techniques and of alternative, non—grain economies less susceptible to a Malthusian population—versus—resources dynamic has undercut the notion of an absolutely overpopulated Europe and has encouraged acceptance of higher rates of mortality from the plague (Campbell, 1983; Bailey, 1989).
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The Black Death and popular rebellion

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- The Black Death and popular rebellion，文章讲述中世纪晚期的民众起义是不可否认的经济后果，通常与黑死病造成的人口，文化，社会和经济改组有关；然而，瘟疫和反抗之间的联系既不是排他的也不是线性的。任何一次起义都很少受到单一原因分析的影响，就像一个单一的社会经济利益集团很少是动乱的源头。十四世纪上半叶叛乱的爆发（例如，在城市[1302]和海上[1325–28]法兰德斯以及在英国修道院城镇[1326-27]中）表明，在社会主义和社会主义不满之前，社会经济和政治不满的存在黑死病。
The Black Death and popular rebellion
The late medieval popular uprising, a phenomenon with undeniable economic ramifications, is often linked with the demographic, cultural, social, and economic reshuffling caused by the Black Death; however, the connection between pestilence and revolt is neither exclusive nor linear. Any single uprising is rarely susceptible to a single—cause analysis and just as rarely was a single socioeconomic interest group the fomenter of disorder. The outbreak of rebellion in the first half of the fourteenth century (e.g., in urban [1302] and maritime [1325—28] Flanders and in English monastic towns [1326—27]) indicates the existence of socioeconomic and political disgruntlement well before the Black Death.
Some explanations for popular uprising, such as the placing of immediate stresses on the populace and the cumulative effect of centuries of oppression by manorial lords, are now largely dismissed. At times of greatest stress —— the Great Famine and the Black Death —— disorder but no large—scale, organized uprising materialized. Manorial oppression likewise is difficult to defend when the peasant in the plague’s aftermath was often enjoying better pay, reduced dues and services, broader opportunities, and a higher standard of living. Detailed study of the participants in the revolts most often labeled “peasant” uprisings has revealed the central involvement and apparent common cause of urban and rural tradesmen and craftsmen, not only manorial serfs.
The Black Death may indeed have made its greatest contribution to popular rebellion by expanding the peasant’s horizons and fueling a sense of grievance at the pace of change, not at its absence. The plague may also have undercut adherence to the notion of a divinely—sanctioned, static social order and buffeted a belief that preservation of manorial socioeconomic arrangements was essential to the survival of all, which in turn may have raised receptiveness to the apocalyptic socially revolutionary message of preachers like England’s John Ball. After the Black Death, change was inevitable and apparent to all.
The reasons for any individual rebellion were complex. Measures in the environs of Paris to check wage hikes caused by the plague doubtless fanned discontent and contributed to the outbreak of the Jacquerie of 1358 but high taxation to finance the Hundred Years’ War, depredation by marauding mercenary bands in the French countryside, and the peasantry’s conviction that the nobility had failed them in war roiled popular discontent. In the related urban revolt led by étienne Marcel (1355—58), tensions arose from the Parisian bourgeoisie’s discontent with the war’s progress, the crown’s imposition of regressive sales and head taxes, and devaluation of currency rather than change attributable to the Black Death.
In the English Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381, continued enforcement of the Statute of Laborers no doubt rankled and perhaps made the peasantry more open to provocative sermonizing but labor legislation had not halted higher wages or improvement in the standard of living for peasant. It seems likely that discontent may have arisen from an unsatisfying pace of improvement of the peasant’s lot. The regressive Poll Taxes of 1380 and 1381 also contributed to the discontent. It is furthermore noteworthy that the rebellion began in relatively affluent eastern England, not in the poorer west or north.
In the Ciompi revolt in Florence (1378—83), restrictive gild regulations and denial of political voice to workers due to the Black Death raised tensions; however, Florence’s war with the papacy and an economic slump in the 1370s resulting in devaluation of the penny in which the worker was paid were equally if not more important in fomenting unrest. Once the value of the penny was restored to its former level in 1383 the rebellion in fact subsided.
In sum, the Black Death played some role in each uprising but, as with many medieval phenomena, it is difficult to gauge its importance relative to other causes. Perhaps the plague’s greatest contribution to unrest lay in its fostering of a shrinking economy that for a time was less able to absorb socioeconomic tensions than had the growing high medieval economy. The rebellions in any event achieved little. Promises made to the rebels were invariably broken and brutal reprisals often followed. The lot of the lower socioeconomic strata was improved incrementally by the larger economic changes already at work. Viewed from this perspective, the Black Death may have had more influence in resolving the worker’s grievances than in spurring revolt.
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The Black Death and commercial economics

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- The Black Death and commercial economics，文章讲述与农业一样，评估黑死病对经济商业部门的影响也是一个复杂的问题。人们普遍承认中世纪高经济的活力。在第一个千年进入第二个世纪之前，城市生活得到复兴，贸易和制造业蓬勃发展，商人和手工艺人兴起，商业和金融创新激增（例如，合伙企业，海事保险，两次入境记账，公函，信用证，汇票，贷款合同，商户银行业务等）。中世纪高级经济的融合达到顶峰c。

The Black Death and commercial economics
As with agriculture, assessment of the Black Death’s impact on the economy’s commercial sector is a complex problem. The vibrancy of the high medieval economy is generally conceded. As the first millennium gave way to the second, urban life revived, trade and manufacturing flourished, merchant and craft gilds emerged, commercial and financial innovations proliferated (e.g., partnerships, maritime insurance, double—entry bookkeeping, fair letters, letters of credit, bills of exchange, loan contracts, merchant banking, etc.). The integration of the high medieval economy reached its zenith c. 1250 to c. 1325 with the rise of large companies with international interests, such as the Bonsignori of Siena and the Buonaccorsi of Florence and the emergence of so—called “super companies” such as the Florentine Bardi, Peruzzi, and Acciaiuoli (Hunt and Murray, 1999).
How to characterize the late medieval economy has been more fraught with controversy, however. Historians a century past, uncomprehending of how their modern world could be rooted in a retrograde economy, imagined an entrepreneurially creative and expansive late medieval economy. Succeeding generations of historians darkened this optimistic portrait and fashioned a late Middle Ages of unmitigated decline, an “age of adversity” in which the economy was placed under the rubric “depression of the late Middle Ages.” The historiographical pendulum now swings away from this interpretation and a more nuanced picture has emerged that gives the Black Death’s impact on commerce its full due but emphasizes the variety of the plague’s impact from merchant to merchant, industry to industry, and city to city. Success or failure was equally possible after the Black Death and the game favored adaptability, creativity, nimbleness, opportunism, and foresight.
Once the magna pestilencia had passed, the city had to cope with a labor supply even more greatly decimated than in the countryside due to a generally higher urban death rate. The city, however, could reverse some of this damage by attracting, as it had for centuries, new workers from the countryside, a phenomenon that deepened the crisis for the manorial lord and contributed to changes in rural settlement. A resurgence of the slave trade occurred in the Mediterranean, especially in Italy, where the female slave from Asia or Africa entered domestic service in the city and the male slave toiled in the countryside. Finding more labor was not, however, a panacea. A peasant or slave performed an unskilled task adequately but could not necessarily replace a skilled laborer. The gross loss of talent due to the plague caused a decline in per capita productivity by skilled labor remediable only by time and training (Hunt and Murray, 1999; Miskimin, 1975).
Another immediate consequence of the Black Death was dislocation of the demand for goods. A suddenly and sharply smaller population ensured a glut of manufactured and trade goods, whose prices plummeted for a time. The businessman who successfully weathered this short—term imbalance in supply and demand then had to reshape his business’ output to fit a declining or at best stagnant pool of potential customers.
The Black Death transformed the structure of demand as well. While the standard of living of the peasant improved, chronically low prices for grain and other agricultural products from the late fourteenth century may have deprived the peasant of the additional income to purchase enough manufactured or trade items to fill the hole in commercial demand. In the city, however, the plague concentrated wealth, often substantial family fortunes, in fewer and often younger hands, a circumstance that, when coupled with lower prices for grain, left greater per capita disposable income. The plague’s psychological impact, moreover, it is believed, influenced how this windfall was used. Pessimism and the specter of death spurred an individualistic pursuit of pleasure, a hedonism that manifested itself in the purchase of luxuries, especially in Italy. Even with a reduced population, the gross volume of luxury goods manufactured and sold rose, a pattern of consumption that endured even after the extra income had been spent within a generation or so after the magna pestilencia.
Like the manorial lord, the affluent urban bourgeois sometimes employed structural impediments to block the ambitious parvenu from joining his ranks and becoming a competitor. A tendency toward limiting the status of gild master to the son or son—in—law of a sitting master, evident in the first half of the fourteenth century, gained further impetus after the Black Death. The need for more journeymen after the plague was conceded in the shortening of terms of apprenticeship, but the newly minted journeyman often discovered that his chance of breaking through the glass ceiling and becoming a master was virtually nil without an entrée through kinship. Women also were banished from gilds as unwanted competition. The urban wage laborer, by and large controlled by the gilds, was denied membership and had no access to urban structures of power, a potent source of frustration. While these measures may have permitted the bourgeois to hold his ground for a time, the winds of change were blowing in the city as well as the countryside and gild monopolies and gild restrictions were fraying by the close of the Middle Ages.
In the new climate created by the Black Death, the individual businessman did retain an advantage: the business judgment and techniques honed during the high Middle Ages. This was crucial in a contracting economy in which gross productivity never attained its high medieval peak and in which the prevailing pattern was boom and bust on a roughly generational basis. A fluctuating economy demanded adaptability and the most successful post—plague businessman not merely weathered bad times but located opportunities within adversity and exploited them. The post—plague entrepreneur’s preference for short—term rather than long—term ventures, once believed a product of a gloomy despondency caused by the plague and exacerbated by endemic violence, decay of traditional institutions, and nearly continuous warfare, is now viewed as a judicious desire to leave open entrepreneurial options, to manage risk effectively, and to take advantage of whatever better opportunity arose. The successful post—plague businessman observed markets closely and responded to them while exercising strict control over his concern, looking for greater efficiency, and trimming costs (Hunt and Murray, 1999).
The fortunes of the textile industry, a trade singularly susceptible to contracting markets and rising wages, best underscores the importance of flexibility. Competition among textile manufacturers, already great even before the Black Death due to excess productive capacity, was magnified when England entered the market for low— and medium—quality woolen cloth after the magna pestilencia and was exporting forty—thousand pieces annually by 1400. The English took advantage of proximity to raw material, wool England itself produced, a pattern increasingly common in late medieval business. When English producers were undeterred by a Flemish embargo on English cloth, the Flemish and Italians, the textile trade’s other principal players, were compelled to adapt in order to compete. Flemish producers that emphasized higher—grade, luxury textiles or that purchased, improved, and resold cheaper English cloth prospered while those that stubbornly competed head—to—head with the English in lower—quality woolens suffered. The Italians not only produced luxury woolens, improved their domestically—produced wool, found sources for wool outside England (Spain), and increased production of linen but also produced silks and cottons, once only imported into Europe from the East (Hunt and Murray, 1999).
The new mentality of the successful post—plague businessman is exemplified by the Florentines Gregorio Dati and Buonaccorso Pitti and especially the celebrated merchant of Prato, Francesco di Marco Datini. The large companies and super companies, some of which failed even before the Black Death, were not well suited to the post—plague commercial economy. Datini’s family business, with its limited geographical ambitions, better exercised control, was more nimble and flexible as opportunities vanished or materialized, and more effectively managed risk, all keys to success. Datini through voluminous correspondence with his business associates, subordinates, and agents and his conspicuously careful and regular accounting grasped the reins of his concern tightly. He insulated himself from undue risk by never committing too heavily to any individual venture, by dividing cargoes among ships or by insuring them, by never lending money to notoriously uncreditworthy princes, and by remaining as apolitical as he could. His energy and drive to complete every business venture likewise served him well and made him an exemplar for commercial success in a challenging era (Origo, 1957; Hunt and Murray, 1999).

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The Black Death and agricultural economics

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- The Black Death and agricultural economics，文章讲述在经济的农业部门中，黑死病的影响最大。在这个社会中，除了在城市化程度最高的地区之外，十分之九的人都靠土壤谋生，这不足为奇。

The Black Death and agricultural economics
The lion’s share of the Black Death’s effect was felt in the economy’s agricultural sector, unsurprising in a society in which, except in the most urbanized regions, nine of ten people eked out a living from the soil.
A village struck by the plague underwent a profound though brief disordering of the rhythm of daily life. Strong administrative and social structures, the power of custom, and innate human resiliency restored the village’s routine by the following year in most cases: fields were plowed, crops were sown, tended, and harvested, labor services were performed by the peasantry, the village’s lord collected dues from tenants. Behind this seeming normalcy, however, lord and peasant were adjusting to the Black Death’s principal economic consequence: a much smaller agricultural labor pool. Before the plague, rising population had kept wages low and rents and prices high, an economic reality advantageous to the lord in dealing with the peasant and inclining many a peasant to cleave to demeaning yet secure dependent tenure.
As the Black Death swung the balance in the peasant’s favor, the literate elite bemoaned a disintegrating social and economic order. William of Dene, John Langland, John Gower, and others polemically evoked nostalgia for the peasant who knew his place, worked hard, demanded little, and squelched pride while they condemned their present in which land lay unplowed and only an immediate pang of hunger goaded a lazy, disrespectful, grasping peasant to do a moment’s desultory work (Hatcher, 1994).
Moralizing exaggeration aside, the rural worker indeed demanded and received higher payments in cash (nominal wages) in the plague’s aftermath. Wages in England rose from twelve to twenty—eight percent from the 1340s to the 1350s and twenty to forty percent from the 1340s to the 1360s. Immediate hikes were sometimes more drastic. During the plague year (1348—49) at Fornham All Saints (Suffolk), the lord paid the pre—plague rate of 3d. per acre for more half of the hired reaping but the rest cost 5d., an increase of 67 percent. The reaper, moreover, enjoyed more and larger tips in cash and perquisites in kind to supplement the wage. At Cuxham (Oxfordshire), a plowman making 2s. weekly before the plague demanded 3s. in 1349 and 10s. in 1350 (Farmer, 1988; Farmer, 1991; West Suffolk Record Office 3/15.7/2.4; Harvey, 1965).
In some instances, the initial hikes in nominal or cash wages subsided in the years further out from the plague and any benefit they conferred on the wage laborer was for a time undercut by another economic change fostered by the plague. Grave mortality ensured that the European supply of currency in gold and silver increased on a per—capita basis, which in turned unleashed substantial inflation in prices that did not subside in England until the mid—1370s and even later in many places on the continent. The inflation reduced the purchasing power (real wage) of the wage laborer so significantly that, even with higher cash wages, his earnings either bought him no more or often substantially less than before the magna pestilencia (Munro, 2003; Aberth, 2001).
The lord, however, was confronted not only by the roving wage laborer on whom he relied for occasional and labor—intensive seasonal tasks but also by the peasant bound to the soil who exchanged customary labor services, rent, and dues for holding land from the lord. A pool of labor services greatly reduced by the Black Death enabled the servile peasant to bargain for less onerous responsibilities and better conditions. At Tivetshall (Norfolk), vacant holdings deprived its lord of sixty percent of his week—work and all his winnowing services by 1350—51. A fifth of winter and summer week—work and a third of reaping services vanished at Redgrave (Suffolk) in 1349—50 due to themagna pestilencia. If a lord did not make concessions, a peasant often gravitated toward any better circumstance beckoning elsewhere. At Redgrave, for instance, the loss of services in 1349—50 directly due to the plague was followed in 1350—51 by an equally damaging wave of holdings abandoned by surviving tenants. For the medieval peasant, never so tightly bound to the manor as once imagined, the Black Death nonetheless fostered far greater rural mobility. Beyond loss of labor services, the deceased or absentee peasant paid no rent or dues and rendered no fees for use of manorial monopolies such as mills and ovens and the lord’s revenues shrank. The income of English lords contracted by twenty percent from 1347 to 1353 (Norfolk Record Office WAL 1247/288×1; University of Chicago Bacon 335—6; Gottfried, 1983).
Faced with these disorienting circumstances, the lord often ultimately had to decide how or even whether the pre—plague status quo could be reestablished on his estate. Not capitalistic in the sense of maximizing productivity for reinvestment of profits to enjoy yet more lucrative future returns, the medieval lord nonetheless valued stable income sufficient for aristocratic ostentation and consumption. A recalcitrant peasantry, diminished dues and services, and climbing wages undermined the material foundation of the noble lifestyle, jostled the aristocratic sense of proper social hierarchy, and invited a response.
In exceptional circumstances, a lord sometimes kept the peasant bound to the land. Because the nobility in Spanish Catalonia had already tightened control of the peasantry before the Black Death, because underdeveloped commercial agriculture provided the peasantry narrow options, and because the labor—intensive demesne agriculture common elsewhere was largely absent, the Catalan lord through a mix of coercion (physical intimidation, exorbitant fees to purchase freedom) and concession (reduced rents, conversion of servile dues to less humiliating fixed cash payments) kept the Catalan peasant in place. In England and elsewhere on the continent, where labor services were needed to till the demesne, such a conservative approach was less feasible. This, however, did not deter some lords from trying. The lord of Halesowen (Worcestershire) not only commanded the servile tenant to perform the full range of services but also resuscitated labor obligations in abeyance long before the Black Death, tantamount to an unwillingness to acknowledge anything had changed (Freedman, 1991; Razi, 1981).
Europe’s political elite also looked to legal coercion not only to contain rising wages and to limit the peasant’s mobility but also to allay a sense of disquietude and disorientation arising from the Black Death’s buffeting of pre—plague social realities. England’s Ordinance of Laborers (1349) and Statute of Laborers (1351) called for a return to the wages and terms of employment of 1346. Labor legislation was likewise promulgated by the Córtes of Aragon and Castile, the French crown, and cities such as Siena, Orvieto, Pisa, Florence, and Ragusa. The futility of capping wages by legislative fiat is evident in the French crown’s 1351 revision of its 1349 enactment to permit a wage increase of one third. Perhaps only in England, where effective government permitted robust enforcement, did the law slow wage increases for a time (Aberth, 2001; Gottfried, 1983; Hunt and Murray, 1999; Cohn, 2007).
Once knee—jerk conservatism and legislative palliatives failed to revivify pre—plague socioeconomic arrangements, the lord cast about for a modus vivendi in a new world of abundant land and scarce labor. A sober triage of the available sources of labor, whether it was casual wage labor or a manor’s permanent stipendiary staff (famuli) or the dependent peasant, led to revision of managerial policy. The abbot of Saint Edmund’s, for example, focused on reconstitution of the permanent staff (famuli) on his manors. Despite mortality and flight, the abbot by and large achieved his goal by the mid—1350s. While labor legislation may have facilitated this, the abbot’s provision of more frequent and lucrative seasonal rewards, coupled with the payment of grain stipends in more valuable and marketable cereals such as wheat, no doubt helped secure the loyalty of famuli while circumventing statutory limits on higher wages. With this core of labor solidified, the focus turned to preserving the most essential labor services, especially those associated with the labor—intensive harvesting season. Less vital labor services were commuted for cash payments and ad hoc wage labor then hired to fill gaps. The cultivation of the demesne continued, though not on the pre—plague scale.
For a time in fact circumstances helped the lord continue direct management of the demesne. The general inflation of the quarter—century following the plague as well as poor harvests in the 1350s and 1360s boosted grain prices and partially compensated for more expensive labor. This so—called “Indian summer” of demesne agriculture ended quickly in the mid—1370s in England and subsequently on the continent when the post—plague inflation gave way to deflation and abundant harvests drove prices for commodities downward, where they remained, aside from brief intervals of inflation, for the rest of the Middle Ages. Recurrences of the plague, moreover, placed further stress on new managerial policies. For the lord who successfully persuaded new tenants to take over vacant holdings, such as happened at Chevington (Suffolk) by the late 1350s, the pestis secunda of 1361—62 often inflicted a decisive blow: a second recovery at Chevington never materialized (West Suffolk Records Office 3/15.3/2.9—2.23).
Under unremitting pressure, the traditional cultivation of the demesne ceased to be viable for lord after lord: a centuries—old manorial system gradually unraveled and the nature of agriculture was transformed. The lord’s earliest concession to this new reality was curtailment of cultivated acreage, a trend that accelerated with time. The 590.5 acres sown on average at Great Saxham (Suffolk) in the late 1330s was more than halved (288.67 acres) in the 1360s, for instance (West Suffolk Record Office, 3/15.14/1.1, 1.7, 1.8).
Beyond reducing the demesne to a size commensurate with available labor, the lord could explore types of husbandry less labor—intensive than traditional grain agriculture. Greater domestic manufacture of woolen cloth and growing demand for meat enabled many English lords to reduce arable production in favor of sheep—raising, which required far less labor. Livestock husbandry likewise became more significant on the continent. Suitable climate, soil, and markets made grapes, olives, apples, pears, vegetables, hops, hemp, flax, silk, and dye—stuffs attractive alternatives to grain. In hope of selling these cash crops, rural agriculture became more attuned to urban demand and urban businessmen and investors more intimately involved in what and how much of it was grown in the countryside (Gottfried, 1983; Hunt and Murray, 1999).
The lord also looked to reduce losses from demesne acreage no longer under the plow and from the vacant holdings of onetime tenants. Measures adopted to achieve this end initiated a process that gained momentum with each passing year until the face of the countryside was transformed and manorialism was dead. The English landlord, hopeful for a return to the pre—plague regime, initially granted brief terminal leases of four to six years at fixed rates for bits of demesne and for vacant dependent holdings. Leases over time lengthened to ten, twenty, thirty years, or even a lifetime. In France and Italy, the lord often resorted to métayage or mezzadria leasing, a type of sharecropping in which the lord contributed capital (land, seed, tools, plow teams) to the lessee, who did the work and surrendered a fraction of the harvest to the lord.
Disillusioned by growing obstacles to profitable cultivation of the demesne, the lord, especially in the late fourteenth century and the early fifteenth, adopted a more sweeping type of leasing, the placing of the demesne or even the entire manor “at farm” (ad firmam). A “farmer” (firmarius) paid the lord a fixed annual “farm” (firma) for the right to exploit the lord’s property and take whatever profit he could. The distant or unprofitable manor was usually “farmed” first and other manors followed until a lord’s personal management of his property often ceased entirely. The rising popularity of this expedient made direct management of demesne by lord rare by c. 1425. The lord often became a rentier bound to a fixed income. The tenurial transformation was completed when the lord sold to the peasant his right of lordship, a surrender to the peasant of outright possession of his holding for a fixed cash rent and freedom from dues and services. Manorialism, in effect, collapsed and was gone from western and central Europe by 1500.
The landlord’s discomfort ultimately benefited the peasantry. Lower prices for foodstuffs and greater purchasing power from the last quarter of the fourteenth century onward, progressive disintegration of demesnes, and waning customary land tenure enabled the enterprising, ambitious peasant to lease or purchase property and become a substantial landed proprietor. The average size of the peasant holding grew in the late Middle Ages. Due to the peasant’s generally improved standard of living, the century and a half following the magna pestilencia has been labeled a “golden age” in which the most successful peasant became a “yeoman” or “kulak” within the village community. Freed from labor service, holding a fixed copyhold lease, and enjoying greater disposable income, the peasant exploited his land exclusively for his personal benefit and often pursued leisure and some of the finer things in life. Consumption of meat by England’s humbler social strata rose substantially after the Black Death, a shift in consumer tastes that reduced demand for grain and helped make viable the shift toward pastoralism in the countryside. Late medieval sumptuary legislation, intended to keep the humble from dressing above his station and retain the distinction between low— and highborn, attests both to the peasant’s greater income and the desire of the elite to limit disorienting social change (Dyer, 1989; Gottfried, 1983; Hunt and Murray, 1999).
The Black Death, moreover, profoundly altered the contours of settlement in the countryside. Catastrophic loss of population led to abandonment of less attractive fields, contraction of existing settlements, and even wholesale desertion of villages. More than 1300 English villages vanished between 1350 and 1500. French and Dutch villagers abandoned isolated farmsteads and huddled in smaller villages while their Italian counterparts vacated remote settlements and shunned less desirable fields. The German countryside was mottled with abandoned settlements. Two thirds of named villages disappeared in Thuringia, Anhalt, and the eastern Harz mountains, one fifth in southwestern Germany, and one third in the Rhenish palatinate, abandonment far exceeding loss of population and possibly arising from migration from smaller to larger villages (Gottfried, 1983; Pounds, 1974).
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Study on the Stamp Act

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文 -- Study on the Stamp Act，文章讲述通过课堂学习，我学到了很多关于大众传播媒体的历史。尤其是我自己对UW图书馆的主要材料进行了研究，我了解到，由于社会，政治和技术的变化，在线上有许多历史宝藏，并且经历了多年来的媒体发展。最重要的是，我获得了一些研究技能，以关于如何对历史事件的陈述进行事实核对。例如，当研究臭名昭著的《邮票法》时，我发现了一篇原创文章，该文章于1765年在殖民地报纸上发表，涉及该主题，并经历了次要和主要来源的不同以及寻找研究材料的乐趣。

Study on the Stamp Act
Through the classes study, I have learned a lot about the communication history of mass media. Especially with the research of sourcing primary materials in the UW library by myself, I learned that there are lots of historical treasures available online and experienced the media evolution over years because of the social, political and technological changes. Most importantly, I acquired some research skills on how to fact check the validity and truth of statements about historical events. For example, when researching the infamous topic of Stamp Act, I have found an original article, which was published in 1765 in a colonial newspaper, about this topic and experienced the difference of the secondary and primary sources and the pleasure of searching research materials.
I chose this article to finish my assignment research with the following reasons. First, this article was published on October 31, 1765, the date before the time of American Revolutionary War, and it was delivered in the Pennsylvania Gazette, a colonial newspaper, both of which quite conform to the requirements of my assignment research. Secondary, this article was mainly about the illustration of the opinions of the implementation of infamous Stamp Act, which can provide direct and primary statements about Stamp Act at that time for my research to a large extent. Finally, this article is a classic example that tells the evolution of newspaper over years and the difference between the former newspaper article and today’s newspaper article.
As for the newspaper article between the former and today’s, Andrlik analyzes very well about their difference about the colonial journalism in the NPR interview. From the NPR interview with Andrlik, I learned that the former journalism has many differences from today’s newspaper. The former newspaper usually had only four pages in length and only about 10 by 15 inches tall. Also, the former newspaper generally had no headlines and used datelines because they always printed news from other newspaper with a news exchange system. In addition, they, generally speaking, had pre-date standardized English and frequent run-on sentences. And the newspaper article I chose had quite experienced the features of what Andrlik tells in the interview.
Only four pages in length and only about 10 by 15 inches tall. Though the article I chose had only four pages (double space), its version is quite different from today’s newspaper article. And throughout the newspaper, I think it is about 10 by 15 inches tall. With such the size, this newspaper article reads well and tells the large difference from today’s newspaper, which confirms to Andrlik’s idea about the colonial journalism mentioned in the interview.
No headlines and using datelines in the article. When finding the article, I see that there is a title written in the database with “BOSTON, October 17”. However, obviously, such the title is not a formal headline of the newspaper. And it used datelines of “October 17” in the title. The article was published in the newspaper of The Pennsylvania Gazette, which seems to be what Andrlik talks in the interview that they printed news from other newspaper with a news exchange. Quiet differently, the article tells the classic feature of no headline and using dateline as a title.
Using pre-date standardized English and frequent run-on sentences. Overseeing the article I chose, there are many commas and capital letters in each paragraph. For example, in the first paragraph as follows,
At a legal Meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of
the TOWN of CAMBRIDGE, this 14th of October, 1765, the Hon.
WILLIAM BEATTLE, Esq; chosen Moderator,
VOTED, THAT (with all Humility) it is the Opinion of the Town,
that the Inhabitants of this Province have a legal Claim to
all the natural, inherent, constitutional Rights of
Englishmen, notwithstanding their great Distance from Great
Britain --- That the Stamp Act is an Infraction upon these
Rights --- one Instance in our Opinion, among many, is as
follows:
there are about 11 commas and 21 capital letters, which is quite different from today’s newspaper article. In the first paragraph cited above, there are only two sentences but 11 commas, so this can be said to one of the large features of the newspaper article in the old time.
Through the class study and the research in the internet of UW library by myself, I have learned a lot about the historical communication of mass media. I learned that there are great differences between the old and today’s newspaper because of the social, political and technological changes. Reading the former colonial newspaper that I selected, I know that the former newspaper had different size of newspaper version, no headline with using dateline at the start of the article and used pre-dated standardized English and frequent run-on sentences. And here I cited one colonial newspaper article as follows.
BOSTON, October 17.
At a legal Meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of
the TOWN of CAMBRIDGE, this 14th of October, 1765, the Hon.
WILLIAM BEATTLE, Esq; chosen Moderator,
VOTED, THAT (with all Humility) it is the Opinion of the Town,
that the Inhabitants of this Province have a legal Claim to
all the natural, inherent, constitutional Rights of
Englishmen, notwithstanding their great Distance from Great
Britain --- That the Stamp Act is an Infraction upon these
Rights --- one Instance in our Opinion, among many, is as
follows:

The Distributor of the Stamps , or Mr. INFORMER, have a
Sovereignty over every Thing but the Lives of the People,
since it is in their Power to summon every one they please to
Quebec, Montreal or Newfoundland, to answer for the pretended
or real Breaches of this Act . When the distressed Subject
arrives there, by whom is he to be tried? --- Not by his Peers
in the Vicinage, (the Birthright of every Englishman) no! by
the Judge of Admiralty, without a Jury; and, it is possible,
without Law! Under these Circumstances, the Stamp Distributor
or INFORMER, may unrighteously get from His Majestygood
American Subjects, more that His Majesty, upon a Ballance, may
get by the Stamps : For who would not rather pay the Fine,
guilty or not, than be thus harrassed, thus tried? --- Why are
not His Majestygood Subjects of Great Britain thus treated?
Why must we in America, who have in every Instance discovered
as much Loyalty to His Majesty, and Obedience to his Laws, as
any of His British Subjects; and whose Exertions, in some of
the Provinces and Colonies, during the last War, have been
greater, must be thus discriminated? --- at this Time
especially, whilst we are struggling under an almost
insupportable Load of Debt, the Consequence of these
Exertions. We believe it may be truly said, that no one in
Great Britain pays so great a Tax as some do in this Province,
in Proportion to their Estates.

Let this Act but take Place, Liberty will be no more ---
Trade will languish and die --- our Cash will be sent into his
MajestyExchequer --- and Poverty come upon us like an armed
Man.

The Town therefore hereby advise and direct their
Representatives, by no Means whatsoever to do any one Thing
that may aid said Act in its Operation; but that, in
Conjunction with the Friends of Liberty, they use their utmost
Endeavour that the same might be repealed --- That this Vote
be recorded in the Town Book, that the Children yet unborn may
see the Desire their Ancestors had for their Freedom and
Happiness; and that an attested Copy be given said
Representatives for their Conduct.

Westmoreland, September 24, 1765.
To the Honourable the Governor and Council of VIRGINIA.
THE very great Impropriety of Acting in an Office which at
once requires the Discharge of Duties, utterly inconsistent
with each other, makes it indispensibly necessary to give your
Honours this timely Information that, after the First Day of
November next, We the under written Magistrates of
Westmoreland, find Ourselves compelled, by the strongest
Motives of Honour and Virtue, to decline Acting in that
Capacity; because, from that Period, the Act for establishing
Stamps in America commences; which Act will impose on us a
Necessity, in Consequence of the Judicial Oath we take, of
Acting in Conformity to its Directions, and, by doing so, to
become Instrumental in the Destruction of Our Countrymost
essential Rights and Liberties. (Signed by the JUSTICES.)

51due留学教育原创版权郑重声明：原创优秀代写范文源自编辑创作，未经官方许可，网站谢绝转载。对于侵权行为，未经同意的情况下，51Due有权追究法律责任。主要业务有essay代写、assignment代写、paper代写、作业代写服务。
51due为留学生提供最好的作业代写服务，亲们可以进入主页了解和获取更多代写范文提供作业代写服务，详情可以咨询我们的客服QQ：800020041。