A Country Merchant 1495 1520 Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages 1st Edition by Christopher Dyer 9780191624452 0191624454

A Country Merchant 1495 1520 Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages 1st Edition by Christopher Dyer – Ebook PDF Instant Download/Delivery: 9780191624452, 0191624454
Full download A Country Merchant 1495 1520 Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages 1st Edition by Christopher Dyer after payment

Product details:

ISBN 10: 0191624454
ISBN 13: 9780191624452
Author: Christopher Dyer 

Around 1500 England’s society and economy had reached a turning point. After a long period of slow change and even stagnation, an age of innovation and initiative was in motion, with enclosure, voyages of discovery, and new technologies. It was an age of fierce controversy, in which the government was fearful of beggars and wary of rebellions. The ‘commonwealth’ writers such as Thomas More were sharply critical of the greed of profit hungry landlords who dispossessed the poor. This book is about a wool merchant and large scale farmer who epitomises in many ways the spirit of the period. John Heritage kept an account book, from which we can reconstruct a whole society in the vicinity of Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire. He took part in the removal of a village which stood in the way of agricultural ‘improvement’, ran a large scale sheep farm, and as a ‘woolman’ spent much time travelling around the countryside meeting with gentry, farmers, and peasants in order to buy their wool. He sold the fleeces he produced and those he gathered to London merchants who exported through Calais to the textile towns of Flanders. The wool growers named in the book can be studied in their native villages, and their lives can be reconstructed in the round, interacting in their communities, adapting their farming to new circumstances, and arranging the building of their local churches. A Country Merchant has some of the characteristics of a biography, is part family history, and part local history, with some landscape history. Dyer explores themes in economic and social history without neglecting the religious and cultural background. His central concerns are to demonstrate the importance of commerce in the period, and to show the contribution of peasants to a changing economy.

A Country Merchant 1495 1520 Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages 1st Table of contents:

List of Maps and Figures

List of Tables

Abbreviations

Locating Places Mentioned in this Book

A Note on Weights and Measures

1. Introduction: Living in 1495–1520

Population and Resources

The Transition to Capitalism

Institutions

Commercialization

Social Restructuring

Sources

2. Family and Household: John Heritage and his Contemporaries

John Heritage and his Family

The Heritage Family in Context

3. John Heritage’s Country

The Landscape of Heritage’s Country

Links and Resemblances

Towns and Communications

Conclusion

4. John Heritage’s Wool Business

Accounting

Making Contact with the Suppliers

Buying and Selling Wool

Paying for Commerce

The Trajectory of the Business

5. Pasture, Sheep, Wool, and People

Peopling the Land

Grazing the Land

Deserted Village Sites

Using Pasture

Demesnes and Pasture

Peasants and Pasture

A Profile of Wool Producers

Conclusion

6. Beyond the Account Book: Changing the Countryside

Lordship

Peasantry

Labour

Conclusion

Postscript: Signs of growth

7. Individuals and Communities

John Heritage the Individual

Individual and Collective Religious Practice

Town and Village Communities

Conclusion

Appendix 1. Sample pages from the account book

Appendix 2. Tables of gathered wool, Heritage’s own wool, and wool prices

Appendix 3. Deserted villages

Bibliography

Index

People also search for A Country Merchant 1495 1520 Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages 1st:

country 12 mercantile
    
country merchant
    
a country store
    
a country store visalia
    
merchant country 840

Tags: Country Merchant, Trading, Christopher Dyer