Society and Economy in Germany, 1300-1600

Description

This text surveys the social and economic development of the German speaking lands from the age of the Black Death to the eve of the Thirty Years War. It outlines the political geography of the German lands, the aristocratic character of the Empire as a constitutional polity based on a society of Estates, and the changes in society and economy in the wake of the late medieval agrarian crisis. It examines in detail divergent regional and economic trends, and the widening social gulf between the West German landlordship and the new seigneurialism east of the Elbe, and gives wide coverage of urban and rural revolts.

TOM SCOTT is Reader in History at the University of Liverpool. He has been an Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation Fellow and a Leverhulme Research Fellow. He is author of 10 books and over 50 articles on town-country relations and regional systems in late medieval and early modern Germany, the German Peasants' War and the German Reformation.

'His broad accounts of the social order, the importance of mortgaging in late medieval state formation, the increasing incidence of serfdom in both west and east, and late medieval ideals of reform, will prove of lasting value. At the same time the smooth integration of analyses of power into spatial analyses of commercial development, utilizing the tools of historical geography, provides an exemplary case for historians of other regions to follow.' - Paul Warde, University of Cambridge, The Economic History Review 'It fills a major gap, and will be welcomed both by students and their teachers. Scott has written a very learned, wide-ranging and helpful book.' - Len Scales, University of Durham 'This tough-minded but wise and up-to-date introduction is appropriate for upper-division undergraduates and above.' - J.T. Rosenthal, Choice