THÔNG TIN TÀI LIỆU
34 agriculture: Europe goats grazing on fertile pastures—and producing the fertilizer vitally needed for crops—setting the stage for the many troubles of the 14th century Cash transactions became more common in marketplaces and between peasants and landowners With the demand for hard money increasing and with the use of silver coins for paying rents, taxes, and fees, the European farmer was forced to grow and market a wider array of surplus crops The subsistence farming of the early Middle Ages gave way to a more complex market economy in which supply and demand determined prices and the farmer began selling his harvest to raise money, which in turn allowed him to purchase food for his own table The growth of large cities provided another impetus to agriculture; cities became vast cash markets, home to large commercial networks for buying, transporting, and selling food Kings and their ministers paid close attention to conditions in the countryside, because successful harvests meant lower prices and helped rulers keep the peace among the naturally restive urban populations Labor in the countryside became increasingly specialized, and as transportation improved, moving goods to market became easier and faster This was especially true of livestock produce, such as wool, butter, cheese, meat, milk, and hides, which could be brought to market along roads and byways, avoiding the hazards of river and sea transportation Rural Crisis The urbanization of medieval Europe was a spur to improvements in farming technology In the early 1300s, however, an agricultural crisis took hold in England and western Europe Heavy rains in 1315 ruined England’s harvest, driving up the price of grain to six times its average Over the winter of 1315 to 1316 a famine struck England and western Europe A few years later animal herds were devastated by murrain, a disease outbreak that robbed many peasants of meat and milk and the means to plow their fields The series of bad harvests and droughts caused widespread starvation so desperate in some places that people resorted to cannibalism Village peasants were now bearing the burden of supplying food to an increasing urban population, which produced no food of its own and was utterly dependent on good harvests for daily sustenance Desperate to sustain themselves, peasants flooded into the cities, causing overcrowding, crime, and unsanitary conditions Epidemics of typhus, plague, and other diseases became more common, until the Black Death of 1347 to 1349 killed about one-third of the population of Europe In France the Hundred Years’ War struck another blow to peasant farmers who suffered the pillaging and theft of crops and animals by the hungry roving armies of English, French, and Burgundians The war continued until the middle of the 15th century, leaving entire regions of northern France denuded of crops and inhabitants Just as the war came to an end, a general shift in climate occurred; a little ice age began, with colder temperatures and shorter growing seasons Gradually, Europe recovered from the frequent plagues, social chaos, and war, but the crisis had left a permanent mark on agriculture With their labor in high demand in the cities, many farmers left the countryside to become artisans in the cities The return of a cash economy enabled farmers who remained in the rural areas to begin buying land of their own One of the areas to recover quickly was the Netherlands, where the industrious Dutch had been raising great swaths of new country from the sea floor for several centuries Farmers raised berms, or mounds of earth, to canalize the water and built terps, small areas of raised land on which houses and barns could be built They repaired dikes and polders, large and level areas of cultivable reclaimed from the sea Dutch farmers began rasing new crops of legumes and root vegetable crops as well In England a transformation took place as the open fields were enclosed for raising sheep for wool, a commodity in high demand on the continent To survive in this land-use environment, English farmers had to consolidate their scattered strips of land and enclose them with fences or hedges This incited an enclosure controversy that continued for some two centuries; eventually the profitable trade in English wool overwhelmed the efforts of English farmers to hold to their traditional system of open-field farming In the meantime, on the European continent the system of manorial lords and serfs gradually gave way to an independent landowning peasantry, subject more to the whims of the marketplace than to feudal obligations to landowners In the Byzantine realm serfdom became more common in the late Middle Ages Many villages became the property of wealthy landowners or were absorbed by monasteries The rise of the Seljuk and then Ottoman Turks in Asia Minor posed a constant threat to the empire and its farmers By the 14th century the rural population was in decline throughout the Byzantine Empire, affected by war, plagues, and a weak and corrupt government With the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Turks destroyed the last remnant of the Roman Empire and imposed a new administration and tax system in the countryside The former Byzantine lands were further isolated from western Europe and adopted a new form of rural feudalism, in which Ottoman hospodars (governors) imposed heavy taxes and put strict limits on the movement of the rural population
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