Peasant Economic Development Within the English Manorial System

Jeremy Caple is an assistant professor of history at the University of
Toronto.

J.A. Raftis offers a revisionist view of the world of the medieval manor
and the role of the peasantry in English feudalism. He has turned the
medieval economic world on its head by arguing that rather than
subordinating the peasant to customary service as has traditionally been
asserted, the lord of the manor sought to maximize profitability by
enhancing the opportunity of capital maintenance. Customary tenures were
entered into increasingly by the wealthier peasants and through a
careful analysis of rent rolls, charters, court rolls, and various other
manifestations of the management of the manorial economy. Raftis is able
to demonstrate just why landlords preferred to ignore or levy minor
fines when increasing numbers of those wealthier peasants refused
customary service and went their own way. The answer lies in the
operation of the increasingly important market, a market that provided
an incentive to increased productivity in the manorial economy. The key
to such an increase was the availability of capital.

Much of this carefully documented and well-argued monograph relies on
evidence drawn from limited sources, but (as all historians must) Raftis
has generalized where the evidence appears to warrant. Seeking to offer
a view of the world of the peasant economy that eschews the a priori
assumptionist views of class conflict offered by neoclassical and
neo-Marxist historio- graphy, Raftis posits in its place a world in
which the individual peasant and his family emerge as important actors.
By arguing that the lord of the manor gained much by avoiding conflict
and by pointing to examples of those that did not, Raftis is able to
demonstrate the utility and the self-interest at work in lord-peasant
relationships. The landlord gained much more from cooperation than from
conflict.

Raftis argues that this climate is found in the century before the
Black Death of 1348, thereby challenging that historiography that points
to the decimation caused by the plague as the pivotal point in the
changes in peasant-landlord relations. There remains a lot more work to
be carried out in this area, but this book constitutes an impressive
beginning.