Agricultural products were most of what was produced by human labour in the middle ages, and for that reason the control of these, ad by extension the land that produced them, was central. Most people, over four fifths of the population in the early middle ages.were peasants: that is to say, they worked directly on the land as subsistence cultivators. There was nothing which one could call a factory in the middle ages, or for a long time afterwards. The reason is simple: all pre-industrial societies are based on agricultural wealth above all. Medieval political communities based their coherence and their succeeds on the control of land. His approach echoes Marx (who he quotes in the introductory chapter) but probably shouldn't be described as "Marxist", perhaps a more structuralist approach. Wickham is concerned with the way the economic base of society creates a large political superstructure. Despite this, I recommend it for anyone trying to understand the trajectory of the medieval period and what this meant for the population of Europe as well as the legacy for the modern world. Despite being relatively short at 250 odd pages (excluding notes) it is dense and cannot really be described as a popular history of the period. In hindsight Chris Wickham's Medieval Europe was probably not an ideal choice for holiday reading.
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