本篇paper代写- The rural economy of late medieval England讨论了中世纪晚期英国的农村经济。中世纪晚期,英国的农业生产力水平全面提升,创造出了更多的社会财富,促进了英国社会经济的繁荣。同时,英国社会独特的传统习惯和法律机制,又赋予了社会基本劳动群众一种原始个人权利,这种权利在一定程度上形成了对农民利益保护的屏障,使得社会的底层民众能够在超经济强制的条件下逐渐实现了财富的积累。本篇paper代写由51due代写平台整理,供大家参考阅读。
Land is the material basis on which people live and develop, the basic means of production for agricultural production, and the source of all production and existence.
From the 14th to the 15th century AD, especially after the outbreak of the black death, the population of England was greatly reduced and the land resources were abundant. The serfdom system was gradually disbanded and the organization of manors in name only existed. In order to attract more tenants to cultivate the land, the Lord relaxed the lease conditions. For example, the bishop of Worcester's estate has increased the number of tenants renting out their land because of lower entry taxes. In addition to leasing land, farmers could obtain it through other means: buying from other tenants, marrying widows who owned the land, directly acquiring the land of the dead Lord or the land that the tenants had abandoned due to migration, and so on. William white of cowperley, county durham, inherited from his father in 1480 30 acres of land and two cottages, and by purchase in 1482 increased the number of acres from 60 to 80. John mayer of bermfield, Suffolk, inherited 48 acres in 1461, and by purchase and lease increased his holdings to 150 acres in 1478.
Many scholars have judged and analyzed the land possession of farmers in the 12th and 13th centuries, and they all agree that most farmers in the rural society in Britain owned less than 15 acres of land during this period. Hilton estimates that while some landholders in Britain owned 12 to 15 acres or more at the time, most were under five acres. Dale's survey of land holdings in cliffey parish in 1299 showed that the average number of farmers covering less than 15 acres was between 42 and 45 per cent, and estimated that in densely populated east Anglia it was 80 per cent, compared with an average of 50 per cent in the country as a whole. The results were similar. We can see from this that the peasants who owned about 15 acres or less at the end of the 13th century belonged to the middle class, which was the majority in rural society.
After the 14th century, however, farmers holding less than 15 acres became a relatively poor minority in rural society. In most midland villages, for example, most farmers held at least 40 to 50 acres of farmland in 1500. In another example of the scale of farmers' land holdings in the late middle ages, archaeological excavations at codexter, herefordshire, uncovered the remains of two barns belonging to a farmer in the late 15th century, each more than 60 feet long and capable of storing 160 acres of grain. Dale studied the land holdings of two villages in the east and central England, compared the number and proportion of land owned by farmers in the middle of the 13th century and the middle of the 15th century, and further understood the change of the number of land owned by farmers through this table.
Although there were local differences in the change of the amount of land held by British farmers at this time, the trend of land area expansion of most farmers was very obvious, and the area occupied by each household generally increased, while the number of small land holders decreased. He also argues that the average landholder in an English farming area can meet the needs of a farmer's family with half a wilgett, the amount of land needed to maintain the minimum standard of living for an average family. By 1480, according to historians, about three-quarters of the farmers in the midlands had enough land to meet their needs. Most farmers in the late middle ages apparently owned more land than this. For farmers, land is the main means of production, and increasing land ownership is the most effective way to improve their living capacity.
Without land, people cannot make a living, and land needs careful management and utilization by farmers to be more transformed into the means of production and livelihood that people rely on.
The late middle ages was a period of important changes in the agrarian system in England. In the 12th century, the three-bed system was introduced to England. By the 14th century, it was widely promoted and implemented in agricultural production. "In 1300 it is safe to say that almost all were three-way," clapan notes. The three-bed system divides the land into three parts: one-third fallow, one-third sow wheat in the autumn and harvest early next summer, and one-third sow oats, barley or beans in the late spring and harvest in the autumn. The farmland is rotated for three years. Compared with the two-field system, the three-field system has improved the land utilization rate, which is a great progress of the farming system.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the three-field system in the east and southeast of England was gradually replaced by the system of grain rotation, and the fallow land was further reduced. 1268-1269 the earliest recorded abolition of fallow land on the earl of south walshham estate in Norfolk; from the 14th century, records of the reduction or abolition of fallow land in other places gradually increased. For 80 years after 1350, the average area of fallow land on 18 properties in Norfolk was 13.5% of total arable land. The original fallow land will no longer be abandoned, or the fallow period will be reduced, instead of once every three years to once every four to six years. Feed crops, such as legumes, alfalfa and turnips, are cultivated on the original fallow land. The loss of fallow land further increased the amount of land under cultivation, leading farmers to strengthen their fields with labor-intensive inputs, such as multiple plowing, extensive application of fertilizer, and even shipment of manure from Norwich in addition to manure from their sheepfolds. This new method of farming, on the basis of the three-bed system, has further improved the yield of grain and forage, and produced greater economic benefits than single-cropping.
After the mid-14th century, with the expansion of farmers' land holdings and the increase of grain harvest, the midlands and the south adopted the combined farming and pastoral land rotation system. By the 16th and 17th centuries, this method became the main farming system adopted by large lease farmers. As the cultivated area of land increased, the role of fertilizers became more prominent. In order to ensure sufficient fertility of the soil and avoid sterility, landholders often changed the land into pasture for grazing after a few years, and then into arable land after a few years. Thanks to improvements in production technology, famine in England largely disappeared after the 1930s, when there was still a food crisis in parts of the continent. With the implementation of rotation farming system, Britain began to transition from traditional agriculture based on plantation to modern agriculture combined with farming and animal husbandry in the 15th century. The heavy plough, an advanced tool of production in the late middle ages, replaced the traditional light plough when the new farming system was widely adopted. Heavy plough is a new type of plough with wheels. In the land plowed back and forth for several times with light plough, heavy plough only needs to plough once but turns the land more thoroughly. The use of replough also provided the conditions for intensive cultivation of the land. When the population of England fell in the late middle ages and there was a shortage of labor force, the use of heavy plough had obvious advantages, which not only improved the cultivation quality, but also saved labor force.
The application of replough has raised the requirement of animal strength. Horses are increasingly being used in farming as efficient draft animals. Horses have the advantage of being able to plow faster and work longer than conventional cattle. The use of horses increased dramatically after the 13th and 14th centuries. Horses account for 17 per cent, 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the draft stock on the three Worcester estates, which are already heavily used for farming. There are areas where horses and oxen are mixed for farming. For example, in 1291, on the redham and laurend estates of st. Bennett Abbey, there was a plough with two cows and two horses; on the acre estate, three horses and four oxen formed two plough teams. For example, in 1343, the farmer of the slateby estate, who owned 26.5 acres, owned three horses. Two of the horses ploughed the land and the other horse was used to rake the ground. The improvement of production tools has greatly improved the labor efficiency of farmers.
During this period, farmers adopted some other advanced methods of field management: intensive farming, multiple deep plowing, at least three times a year; Scientific and reasonable fertilization, make full use of plant fertilizers, livestock manure and natural marl rich in minerals to improve soil fertility; The use of intensive seeding to curb weed growth and other new production technology, agricultural production technology progress is an important means to improve productivity, all this greatly promoted the progress of British agriculture, increased food production.
Due to the improvement of agricultural production technology, the yield of agricultural land in Britain changed significantly in the 14th and 15th centuries. According to western historians' estimates of the yield per acre of land in the middle ages, we can clearly see the track of crop yield changes in the late middle ages by comparing the 13th to 15th centuries.
Due to the improvement of the yield of land and the surplus of farmers, the grain market in Britain was always active in the late middle ages, and there were special grain markets in small and medium-sized market towns all over the country. In addition to meeting domestic demand, grain was exported in large quantities and, as Moore describes in his history of the people of Britain, the urban population of Flanders such as Ghent and bruges in the 14th and 15th centuries depended on British wheat for a living, or would have starved to death. By the 16th century, Britain was an important grain exporter and London became the national grain distribution center. The increase of grain production has improved farmers' income and consumption ability, providing a guarantee for their improvement of living conditions. At the same time, the surplus food can also release a large number of labor, promote the development of other industries.
The increase of the land holding area and the increase of grain yield provide the condition for the adjustment of agricultural management structure.
After the 13th century, the role of animal husbandry in peasant economy became more and more prominent. In particular, sheep farming gradually became an important means of management for farmers, and its economic prospects became increasingly considerable, which became an important feature of the feudal economy in this period. The rise and development of animal husbandry increased cash income and food sources for farmers and provided animal power and fertilizer for production. Because England has the best pastoral areas, superior grazing conditions, and good wool quality, almost all the classes in the countryside are keen to raise sheep. In the Wiltshire revenue books, William DE putt of west head kept livestock in 1225 that included a horse, six cows, four cows, four calves, a pig and 52 sheep. The lowland areas of cambridgeshire recorded farmers raising 200 poultry and 300 sheep in the early 14th century.
The 14th and 15th centuries saw further development of animal husbandry. According to the research of camble on the agricultural problems of Norfolk from 1250 to 1850, we can see the changes of the livestock raising structure, the improvement of the raising ability and the increase of livestock quantity of British farmers in the late middle ages. Sheep Numbers on the Norwich Abbey estate in east Norfolk were found to have increased fourfold between 1300 and 1500. After the black death, yeomans with 300 sheep were common in some midland villages, and many common sharecroppers had an average of 30 to 60. Some farmers farm only a small amount of land and shift their focus to animal husbandry. Thomas vickers of stronsell, Yorkshire, leased two plots of land for farming in 1451, but his main profits came from his 799 sheep, 198 cattle and 92 horses. There are also farmers who specialize in animal husbandry for the purpose of selling to the market. Richard scholas, for example, paid his parish £20 a year to pasture 4,366 sheep in derelict villages in Sussex, earning a hefty profit beyond the rent. The development of rural animal husbandry has strengthened the link between farmers and the market, not only improving the production and survival ability of farmers and expanding their income sources, but also the importance of animal husbandry in the British economy has become increasingly prominent. According to statistics, in 1357-1360, the export of wool up to 45 varieties; For the British, the 13th and 14th century export trade was synonymous with wool. The act of Edward iv also stated that the production of wool in England constituted the "principal and basic agricultural product" of the kingdom.
From the 15th century, the rapid development of sheep farming promoted the widespread rise of the rural industry led by cloth industry. The industrial center of Britain showed a trend of shifting to the countryside, providing farmers with opportunities to engage in non-agricultural production and absorbing a large number of rural labor force. Between the middle of the 14th century and the end of the 15th century, the output of rural weaving industry increased by more than 14 times, which not only occupied the domestic market, but also covered half of Europe, becoming an important pillar of British industry and trade. As the cloth textile industry went deep into the countryside, the production scale expanded and became the national industry of Britain, the wool exports rose. At the end of the 14th century, the wool exports reached about 40,000 pieces per year, 60,000 pieces from 1437 to 1447, and 70,000 pieces from 1499 to 1500. In the late middle ages, the rise of rural industry represented by textile industry transformed the industrial management mode of peasants from the "unitary economy" of single agricultural planting to the diversified economic structure combining agricultural planting, animal husbandry and rural industry.
The overall improvement of agricultural productivity in the late middle ages created more social wealth and promoted the prosperity of British society and economy. At the same time, the unique traditional habits and legal mechanism of the British society also endowed the basic working people with a "primitive individual right", which to some extent formed a barrier to protect the interests of farmers, enabling the people at the bottom of the society to gradually realize the accumulation of wealth under the conditions of super-economic compulsion. Thus, it laid a comprehensive and solid material foundation for Britain's transition from feudal society to capitalist society.
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