Richard Britnell's The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000-1500, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1993, returns (in both cloth and a welcome paperback) in this second edition as part of the new Manchester Medieval Studies Series, with brief but significant changes in the introduction and conclusion. Because the first edition was not critiqued in The Medieval Review, this summary will evaluate the entire work, rather than just the recent alterations.
Britnell begins by distinguishing between 'weak' and 'strong' commercialization. 'Weak' commercialization is defined as "simply a growth in the total amount of commercial activity over a period of time," and 'strong' commercialization is "commercial activity . . . growing faster than population." The latter definition is more important to Britnell because it makes commercialization a significant cause of social change (for example, much is made of the way 'strong' commercialization improved standards of living). Britnell's intent is to chronicle the progress of both varieties of commercialization and to demonstrate how they were affected by (and affected) a great number of legal, political, and social factors, in addition to the standard economic influences. Commercialization, therefore, is shown to be too complex for its development to be attributable to a single stimulus; for example, it cannot be seen merely as a natural and direct consequence of a growing population. Because Britnell wants to move away from historians' emphasis on population, the book's sections (1000-1180, 1180-1330, and 1330-1500) follow economic rather than demographic turning points. Each of these considers three topics: Markets and Rules (showing where commercial activity was taking place, under whose terms, and what those terms were), Trade and Specialization (describing social obligations and how they were increasingly rendered in cash, and who the beneficiaries of increased trade were), and Lordship (outlining the seigneurial constraints that affected commercialization, as well as the role of lords in economic development).
Britnell characterizes his first period as deficient in the prerequisites for a fully commercial economy, with scattered population, ill-defined formal markets, and low coin per capita. While monetary exchange did supplement an economy essentially based on bartering, tenants were mainly driven to produce and sell agricultural surplus for cash so they could pay customary dues. Here lordship was an important stimulus toward a monetized economy. At the same time, however, lords were largely unfettered by crown or custom and had considerable leeway to act arbitrarily; the subsequent uncertainties of tenure and property were not conducive to the open sale and purchase of land and goods. Towns, characterized in later periods as bustling communities of privileged merchants, at this point lacked strong self-government or self-regulation, and their inhabitants were little better off than their rural counterparts in terms of economic freedom.
By contrast, Britnell's long thirteenth century (1180-1330) saw a growth in population, heightened seigneurial regulation of markets, and an increase in coinage proportionately greater than population growth. Commercial development can be seen throughout the country, but the general populace seems to have benefited little; instead, this progress seems merely to have supported more people at standards of living little different from those of their long-dead ancestors. Commercialization was facilitated by an increasing proportion of impersonal relationships in society (such as those implicit in monetary leases and contractual retaining) which responded more fluidly to market forces than personal bonds like those of family or 'feudal' service in its idealized form. Commercialization was also made easier by a growing respect for rule-bound law (as opposed to seigneurial caprice), evident in the popularity of royal over seigneurial courts and the codification of manorial custom. Leading the way in this regard were towns, in their capacity as legal enclaves where an entire community was governed by standardized rules.
Between 1330 and 1500, Britnell's final period, declining population led to diminished demand, ploughland acreage, fewer formal markets, and shrinking seigneurial profits. Nonetheless, commercial activity on the whole did not suffer the same proportionate drop as population, in part because the core market system was so well-established. Consequently, standards of living rose significantly for the first time in centuries because there was more wealth per capita. This in turn allowed for increased specialization as people were better able to concentrate on a single trade rather than culling bits of cash from a variety of part-time and/or seasonal employment. High wages, greater availability of land, and continuing commutation of labor services led to an increasing number of free tenants, unburdened by customary dues and services, paying cash rents. Lords surrendered both control over tenants and involvement in their estates by lowering rents and services to attract tenants, and by leasing out former demesne lands. Because of the increased number of lessees and the surrender of seigneurial initiative, Britnell argues that commercial decision-making passed from the top of society to the bottom such that this post-plague period marks a pivotal age in the move from (economic) feudalism to capitalism, especially due to the efforts of the few "vigorous individualists" who sought more than merely to earn a modest basket of goods.
Britnell concludes that his different types of commercialization came to pass during different periods. The conditions for the 'weak' sort, where trade and commercial activity merely increased, were fulfilled from 1000 to 1180 and from 1180 to 1330, but not from 1330 to 1500. The 'strong' definition, which requires commercialization growth to outstrip population growth, only happened in the final period, which is why this is the only time that saw substantial standard-of- living increases.
Britnell's wide-ranging analysis is impressive, and his elucidation of the links binding commercialization to several major themes -- literacy, population, impersonal demand- sensitive relationships, coinage, formal and informal markets, and the routine rule of law -- is convincing. Britnell does not attempt to rank these factors by importance, and indeed it seems that his emphasis on their multiplicity is a warning against such an effort. This, again, is part of the plan to reduce our reliance upon population shifts (the perennial favorite) to explain socioeconomic changes. Britnell's ability to display the interconnectedness of the factors involved in such change makes it difficult indeed for us to believe that population was the 'prime mover' in commercial development. Still, though, it ranks first among the movers we know of. Britnell's conviction is stronger than his evidence when he theorizes that "the decay of England's marketing structure cannot be attributed to the immediate effects of depopulation," and that occupational diversification could offset the pressures of population (he imagines one in five people making at least part of their living by nonagricultural means). In the end, plague remains the linchpin, but at least now we are better informed about the other agents at work.
Britnell's sections on lordship contain some particularly useful conceptualizations. His explanation of the tension between discretionary authority and rule-bound process is well- developed, although the belief that lords voluntarily surrendered their arbitrary powers in return for increased income is important enough to warrant more careful proof. His lords are active, not passive, and seigneurial initiative is given its proper weight as the primary impetus behind commutation and the peasantry's drive for cash. At the same time, Britnell is not entirely successful in showing that lordship was always a major determinant in, nor that it was always significantly affected by, commercialization. Though the first two sections on lordship do a good job of asserting how lords stimulated commercialization, the section for the period 1330 to 1500 does little to advance Britnell's thesis. For example, we read that "economic change cannot provide any general clue to the development of lordship" (205), and a discussion of lord-tenant relationships concludes with "the collapse of serfdom was the most important thing that happened between 1330 and 1500. It cannot be attributed either to ongoing commercialisation or to advances in the character of legal theory and practice" (223). Why, then, in this book about commercialization, do we spend twenty pages reviewing these things?
Part of the problem is the lack of a clear definition of lordship. When, for example, Britnell agrees that commercialization did not weaken ideas of lordship, one wonders if 'lordship' is being used here just to mean 'hierarchy,' 'authority,' or even 'leadership' in a sense not uniquely medieval. Only an unsatisfyingly amorphous conception of lordship, it would seem, allows one to maintain that it was largely unchanged by all the consequences of commercialization. Because of restrictions upon lords and the decline of their discretionary powers over tenants, which Britnell has so convincingly connected with commercialization, fifteenth- century lords exercised their power very differently and much less potently than those of the eleventh century. There is more discontinuity than continuity here, and our understanding of power in the middle ages would be stronger if more a precise terminology was employed to reflect its nuances.
The broadness of Britnell's topic (which, after all, involves half a millennium's worth of social, economic, political, and legal history) and the complexity of his argument together necessitate much synthesis of current scholarship, such that the book at times reads like a general survey. Because his evidence is selected and organized specifically to support his thesis, however, the result is not properly a socioeconomic textbook; students looking for one would be better served by the two-volume work by Miller and Hatcher. Still, the vast amount of information woven into the book will be extremely useful to teachers and graduate students alike. Britnell's three graphs on land tenure would make excellent teaching aids for undergraduates, as would the short table in the conclusion comparing capitalism to feudalism.
Essentially the only difference between this and the first edition is that the introduction and conclusion have been rewritten to provide a substantially more sophisticated (and satisfying) conceptual framework. The changes lengthen the book by eight pages, among which are two new tables. Owners of the first edition should therefore feel little pressure to purchase this updated volume, although anyone with a foot in the waters of England's economic history should at least read Britnell's definitions of commercialization and his honed conclusions about the move from feudalism to capitalism. Editorially, this edition claims to have benefited from "a handful of minor corrections," but on the whole, Manchester has printed directly from Cambridge University Press' original plates, rather than re-typesetting the book. Whatever corrections that were made did not, unfortunately, include minor typographical errors (14, 146) that persist from the first edition, to which are now added three more (ii, 229 236) -- a high proportion, given the small number of changed pages. Similarly, recent titles that have been added to the bibliography could not be woven into the footnotes, so those looking for the latest scholarship should turn to the end of the book.
These are minor concerns, however, especially considering the body of work Britnell has manipulated to elucidate a slippery concept. He is right when he notes that scholarship produced since the first edition has supported rather than undermined his thesis, and this is a deserved tribute to his grasp of five hundred years of English history.