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Published by EH.NET (March 2003) 
 
John Hatcher and Mark Bailey, _Modelling the Middle Ages: The History and Theory of
England's Economic Development_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xiii + 254 pp.
$49.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-19-924411-1; $19.95 (paperback), ISBN: 0-19-924412-X.
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gary Richardson, Department of Economics, University of California,
Irvine. <[log in to unmask]>
 
 
_Modelling the Middle Ages_, by John Hatcher and Mark Bailey, provides a cogent and
comprehensive survey of the history and economics of late medieval England and an
invaluable survey of the history of thought concerning those topics. Scholars interested
in these issues should read this book. It will be especially valuable for graduate and
undergraduate economic history courses, where I expect it to be widely adopted, and for
researchers, like myself, with an interest in medieval England but who had to learn the
material on their own, because they studied at institutions that lacked leading (or any)
scholars in the field. I base my strong recommendation on three features of the text:
 
First, the book is insightful. It demystifies the beliefs underlying the arguments of most
economic historians -- beliefs derived from intellectual foundations established in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Karl
Marx, and other eminent scholars. It explains how and why the work of those intellectual
forefathers generated three grand explanatory models, "population and resources," "class
power and property relations," and "commercialization," and how those models influenced
debates among historians and social scientists concerning the causes and consequences of
economic development during the Middle Ages.
 
Second, the book is useful, in the most practical sense of the term. It summarizes two
hundred years of scholarly literature in a few hundred pages while building a framework, a
lexicon, and a syntax that will allow scholars to compare and contrast their ideas more
precisely than they currently can. It will have wide applications in other fields, such as
global history, particularly global history, where similar models form the foundation of
similar debates.
 
Third, the book is clear, lucid, and accurate. In some cases, the book explains author's
ideas better than the original expositors did themselves. The clarity of the prose and the
organization of the argument assure the material will be accessible to students at all
levels.
 
The foreword and introduction establish the motives of the authors and sketch an outline
of their argument. The authors hope to fulfill a "pressing need of undergraduate students
studying the medieval economy for an introduction to the theory and practice behind the
grand models of development which dominate the subject (p. vii)." As I mentioned earlier,
they more than accomplish that goal. The authors also hope to contribute to the ongoing
scholarly debates concerning the economic development of medieval England. They plan to
compare and contrast the intellectual and empirical content of the methods and models used
to study medieval English economic history and in doing so shed light on the advantages
and disadvantages of each method as well as advance our knowledge of the Middle Ages. They
also accomplish this goal, as my description of the remainder of the book, and hopefully
your reading of the text, should demonstrate.
 
Chapter 1, Methods and Models, explains "why the medieval period has proved so attractive
to the builders of historical models, and theorizing so attractive to medieval historians
(p. 3)." The Middle Ages lasted for more than five centuries. During that long era,
transformations occurred in almost every area of economic and social life. Merely
describing these changes is a challenging task. "Historians cannot hope to describe,
analyze, and explain them by gathering and narrating factual information alone (p. 4)."
They must choose to present certain facts and materials but not others. Their emphasize
depends upon their point of view, their prior beliefs, and the point which they wish to
make. Theory and speculation are therefore indispensable ingredients of any grand survey.
They impose a degree of coherence and clarity and force scholars to fit the facts into a
manageable working framework. In this way, order can be imposed upon the chaos of vast
numbers of pieces of information and answers formulated to crucial questions. In addition,
abstract concepts and formal models help scholars explain why things happened as they did
and what might have happened in counterfactual cases. Explaining such things requires more
than mere narration. Historical changes lasting several centuries and penetrating all
spheres of economic, social, and political activity were the culmination of an infinite
number of individual events. No one can describe them all. Comprehending them requires
analysis, a systematic approach to the material, the sorting and grading of information,
and the weighing of the relative merits of different concepts. Models, in other words, are
needed to seek the reasons behind vast historical processes such as the rise and decline
of serfdom and feudalism, the rise of the money economy and capitalism, the rise and
contraction of economic activity, and the growth of urbanization and industrialization.
 
Chapter 2, Population and Resources, focuses on the first of the grand supermodels, and
the ways in which assumptions influence its results and in which it impinges on historical
analysis "in both a helpful and harmful manner." The population and resource model, also
known as the demographic or Malthusian model, stems from a core set of simple economic
relationships. The productivity of agriculture depends upon the relative scarcity of the
two prime factors of production: land and labor. As addition units of one input are
employed while the others are held constant, the output generated by each additional unit
will eventually fall (diminishing returns). Thus, when land is abundant relative to labor,
the productivity of the land will be low. The productivity of labor will be high. Products
of the land, like foodstuffs and raw materials such as leather, wool, and wood, will be
inexpensive. Wages will be high. When labor is abundant relative to land, the productivity
of the land will be high. The productivity of labor will be low. Food and rents will be
expensive. Real wages will fall. There is clear potential for applying such basic supply
and demand analysis to conditions prevailing in medieval England. "There is abundant
evidence to show that over the longer term there was a strong correlation between rising
population, on the one hand, and increasing land values and agricultural prices, and
falling real wages, and, on the other, between declining population, falling prices and
land values, and rising real wages. By this analysis the Middle Ages falls into two
sharply contrasting periods; with the broad experience of much of the era up until the
fourteenth century conforming to the former set of circumstances, and the later
characteristics persisting throughout much of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries"
(pp. 22-23).
 
Chapter 3, Class Power and Property Relations, examines the second grand supermodel, which
begins with the presumption that the keys to understanding the economic development lie in
the social relations and political and legal institutions of society. Of particular
importance are the "relations between the leading classes and in developments of what are
termed the 'mode of production'" (p. 67). The most popular models of this type are those
constructed by Karl Marx and his intellectual descendants. For Marxists, "history is a
dialectical process in which the future is shaped by the present, just as the present was
shaped by the past, and each distinct era of human development -- ancient, oriental,
feudal, capitalist -- generates from within itself the conditions which will ultimately
transform it" (pp. 67-8). Marxists focus their attention on a limited range of issues,
particularly relations and conflicts among social classes as well as the mode, means, and
relations of production, as the main agents of social and economic change and development.
Thus, the dynamic for the transformation of medieval society lay primarily in the
relationship between lords and peasants, who were the two principle classes of feudal
society. The relationship was inevitably one of conflict, due to the opposing interests of
landlord and tenant, and eventually resulted in a 'crisis of feudalism,' whose "onset is
usually located in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries" (p. 71). At that
time, the increasingly excessive depredations of the landlord class undermined
agricultural productivity, plunged the peasantry into poverty, and inspired them to
struggle against the exploitative social system.
 
Chapter 4, Commercialization, Markets, and Technology, focuses on commercial activity and
technical progress. The bulk of the space is devoted to the rapidly expanding evidentiary
base and to the discussion of ways in which markets and technology could overcome
Malthusian, Ricardian, and Marxist constraints on economic development. There are two
basic theories. Improvements in agriculture -- such as improving land management, crop
rotation, and selective breeding of crops and animals -- raised the productivity of land
and labor. Urbanization and commercialization expanded the scope of the market, the
division of labor, and the wealth of nations.
 
Chapter 5, The Importance of Time and Place, explores the weaknesses of the models
discussed in the previous chapters from three different perspectives. The first exposes
the difficulties that emerge when the models are applied to both the early and later
Middle Ages. In each case, assumptions needed to apply and conclusions drawn from the
application of a model to the earlier era conflict with those from the later period. The
second reviews the wide range of alternative models that have been proposed and which
illuminate inadequacies in existing models. The third tests the validity of the
assumptions and methods of each of the major supermodels by applying them to a particular
test case: the rise and decline of serfdom in medieval England.
 
Chapter 6, Beyond the Classic Supermodels, stresses the limitations of the models
described during the previous chapters. The principal flaws are their neglect of social
factors, institutions, historical contingency, and the uncertainties inherent in
individual behavior and group dynamics. The chapter ends on a hopeful note, by suggesting
ways in which the limitations of these models might be overcome historically, empirically,
and theoretically.
 
Overall, the book does an excellent job of accomplishing its two goals. The first was to
provide a clear and accessible introduction to the conceptual frameworks that have
dominated this field for many decades. The second was to assess the strengths, weaknesses,
relevance, and credibility of the models. The book itself has many strengths and few
weaknesses. I think that in the future students interested in this topic will read it.
 
 
Gary Richardson is Assistant Professor of Economics at UC-Irvine. His dissertation,
"Social Change and Industrial Expansion before the Industrial Revolution" was completed at
the UC-Berkeley.
 
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