British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Medieval peasants were hooked on credit too
We are now all too aware of the perils of easy credit being available to whoever wants it in today’s society. But historians are increasingly aware of how important credit was to ordinary villagers – those who made up most of the population – in medieval times too.
In a new British Academy publication, Credit and Village Society in Fourteenth-Century England, Dr Chris Briggs has produced the first study devoted to credit in rural England in the middle ages, drawing much of his evidence from lawsuits brought in the local manor courts. He demonstrates that credit was not an indication of poverty or difficulty. And the credit networks of the English countryside were surprisingly resilient in the face of the 14th-century crises associated with plague, famine, and economic depression.
This volume will be essential reading for specialists on the medieval English economy, and will also engage a more general readership interested in conditions and structures in pre-industrial and developing societies.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Published:
26 January 2009
Credit and Village Society in Fourteenth-Century England is published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press in January 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-726441-6. 268 pages. £45.00 (see OUP catalogue for information on how to order).
Chris Briggs is Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge. He was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow 2003-2006.
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