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Manors and Markets
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 509

Manors and Markets

Exploring the Low Countries at a regional level, van Bavel highlights the importance of localized structures for determining the nature of social transitions and economic growth.

The Invisible Hand?
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 343

The Invisible Hand?

The Invisible Hand? offers a radical departure from the conventional wisdom of economists and economic historians, by showing that 'factor markets' and the economies dominated by them -- the market economies -- are not modern, but have existed at various times in the past. They rise, stagnate, and decline; and consist of very different combinations of institutions embedded in very different societies. These market economies create flexibility and high mobility in the exchange of land, labour, and capital, and initially they generate economic growth, although they also build on existing social structures, as well as existing exchange and allocation systems. The dynamism that results from the ...

Disasters and History
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 243

Disasters and History

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Development of Leasehold in Northwestern Europe, C. 1200-1600
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 228

The Development of Leasehold in Northwestern Europe, C. 1200-1600

In the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, the exploitation of landownership underwent drastic changes in various parts of Northwestern Europe. In these changes, the emergence of the lease plays a pivotal role. At the end of the Middle Ages, in a number of areas within the North Sea area, the greater part of available land was held at lease for relatively short terms. The competitive and contractual nature of such leasing has caused many to associate it with the emergence of capitalism in the countryside, seeing its rise as a key element in the transformation of the rural economy and society in the last millennium. In view of this, it is surprising that the emergence of leasing has received litt...

A Concise History of Italy
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 348

A Concise History of Italy

A concise history of Italy from the fall of the Roman empire in the west to the present day.

Rural Societies and Environments at Risk
  • Language: en

Rural Societies and Environments at Risk

The various chapters analyse how societies coped with this vulnerability by way of the organization of property rights to land.

Economy/Society
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 268

Economy/Society

Economy/Society provides an introduction to the ways in which economic exchanges are embedded in social relationships. It offers insights into advertising, consumer behaviour, conflicts in the work place, social inequality and other issues.

The Lion's Share
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 245

The Lion's Share

This is the most in-depth analysis of inequality and social polarization ever attempted for a preindustrial society. Using data from the archives of the Venetian Terraferma, and compared with information available for elsewhere in Europe, Guido Alfani and Matteo Di Tullio demonstrate that the rise of the fiscal-military state served to increase economic inequality in the early modern period. Preindustrial fiscal systems tended to be regressive in nature, and increased post-tax inequality compared to pre-tax - in contrast to what we would assume is the case in contemporary societies. This led to greater and greater disparities in wealth, which were made worse still as taxes were collected almost entirely to fund war and defence rather than social welfare. Though focused on Old Regime Europe, Alfani and Di Tullio's findings speak to contemporary debates about the roots of inequality and social stratification.

The Dawn of Dutch
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 633

The Dawn of Dutch

The Low Countries are famous for their radically changing landscape over the last 1,000 years. Like the landscape, the linguistic situation has also undergone major changes. In Holland, an early form of Frisian was spoken until, very roughly, 1100, and in parts of North Holland it disappeared even later. The hunt for traces of Frisian or Ingvaeonic in the dialects of the western Low Countries has been going on for around 150 years, but a synthesis of the available evidence has never appeared. The main aim of this book is to fill that gap. It follows the lead of many recent studies on the nature and effects of language contact situations in the past. The topic is approached from two different angles: Dutch dialectology, in all its geographic and diachronic variation, and comparative Germanic linguistics. In the end, the minute details and the bigger picture merge into one possible account of the early and high medieval processes that determined the make-up of western Dutch.

Coping with Crisis: The Resilience and Vulnerability of Pre-Industrial Settlements
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 409

Coping with Crisis: The Resilience and Vulnerability of Pre-Industrial Settlements

Why in the pre-industrial period were some settlements resilient and stable over the long term while other settlements were vulnerable to crisis? Indeed, what made certain human habitations more prone to decline or even total collapse, than others? All pre-industrial societies had to face certain challenges: exogenous environmental hazards such as earthquakes or plagues, economic or political hazards from ‘outside’ such as warfare or expropriation of property, or hazards of their own-making such as soil erosion or subsistence crises. How then can we explain why some societies were able to overcome or negate these problems, while other societies proved susceptible to failure, as settlemen...