| The chief aim of this PhD thesis is to demonstrate the integration of local economies into larger economic regions. Numerous studies of village economies in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have noted the mobility of both people and goods within a regional nexus, but there has as yet been little sustained analysis of the economic structures within which this movement occurred, nor of its impact on society.; In the first part of the thesis, I devote one chapter to describing the nature of medieval markets, and a second to describing the patterns of inland trade. Markets were regulated by a well-developed set of legal principles formulated gradually over the course of the thirteenth century. Knowledge of these principles can be used to provide clues to how markets functioned in local and regional economies. This is the subject of chapter 1. In chapter 2, I cull the available sources to offer a description of the spatial relationships of market participants to the market, and I offer an analysis of the kinds of goods in common circulation in medieval markets.; Part Two of this thesis is intended to serve as a case study of a regional economy. Four separate chapters describe different aspects of the economic arrangement of the county of Huntingdonshire in the period 1200–1348. Chapter 3 discusses the transportation system of the county, looking at the related subjects of the location of roads and bridges, the way local people made use of the system, and the cost and efficiency of transport. Chapter 4 is devoted to a study of the markets of the county. The main concern of the chapter is to determine the applicability of central-place theory to the county's markets. I argue that the timing and location of the markets conform closely to the tenets of the theory, indicating that each market can be seen as part of a coordinated regional marketing network. In chapter 5, I offer a demonstration of the regional economy in action. English kings repeatedly called on a number of shires, including Huntingdonshire, to provide large amounts of foodstuffs for the armies campaigning in Scotland and France. The arrangements made locally to carry out the royal will demonstrate the existence of a well-developed infrastructure used to transport bulky agricultural goods out of the county. This infrastructure was adapted, not created, to permit foodstuffs to be carried to the army; thus, when one studies war provisioning one is in effect studying the economic organization of the regional economy. The final chapter of this work looks surplus production. The same records used in chapter 5 to describe war provisioning also contain information about the individual suppliers of provisions. Along with the names of suppliers, information is often given about the quantities supplied by each individual. I argue that one can discern in these patterns a group of peasant producers regularly participating in the regional economy. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
