John
Hatcher and Mark Bailey.
Modelling the Middle Ages: The History and
Theory of England's Economic Development.
Oxford U.P., 2001.
xiii,254pp.
Publisher's
recommended price
Hardback, ISBN 0199244111, £30.00
Paperback,
ISBN 019924412X, £13.99
Most of
what has
been written on the economy of the middle ages is deeply influenced by
abstract concepts and theories. The most popular and powerful of these
guiding beliefs are derived from intellectual foundations laid down in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Adam Smith, Johan von
Thünan,
Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. In the hands of
twentieth-century
historians and social scientists these venerable ideas have been
moulded
into three grand explanatory models which continue to dominate
interpretations
of economic development. These trumpet in turns the claims of
'commercialization',
'population and resources', or 'class power and property relations' as
the prime movers of historical change.
In
this highly
original book John Hatcher and Mark Bailey examine the structure and
test
the validity of these conflicting models from a variety of
perspectives.
In the course of their investigations they provide not only detailed
reconstructions
of the economic history of England in the middle ages and sustained
critical
commentaries on the work of leading historians, but also discussions of
the philosophy and methods of history and the social sciences. The
result
is a short and readily intelligible introduction to medieval economic
history,
and up-to-date critique of established models, and a succinct treatise
on historiographical method.
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