Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 1 (2008), p. 99

This volume consists of ten papers published by Bruce Campbell between 1983 and 1998 in journals and edited collections. They appear as they did in their first publication, with original page numbers for ease of reference. Campbell has provided a new introduction and the entire volume is indexed.

All the papers address the issue of the relative importance of supply- and demand-side restraints in the history of English agriculture. In contrast to the work of Postan and Brenner, who emphasized the importance of different supply-side restraints on agricultural development, Campbell demonstrates the responsiveness of medieval cultivators to demand. Two classic early articles on agriculture in Norfolk show the adoption of yield-raising techniques often associated only with later centuries. These include the sowing of legumes, the application of marl and manure and the adoption of mixed farming systems. Later work included in this collection shows that a positive relationship existed between yields and population, both in the middle ages and later centuries. Agricultural productivity was determined not only by the fertility of land but also by the proximity and size of urban markets. Overall, Campbell’s work reflects the ‘uneven development’ (X. 31) of medieval agriculture: when economic rent was sufficiently high, yield-raising techniques were adopted; the reason such techniques were not more widely adopted was that low levels of economic rent lay ‘like a shadow across much of the country’ (IX. 853). This interpretation is important in differentiating medieval development from later agricultural change but Campbell also points out that increased productivity in the middle ages occurred at the expense of labour productivity. Only when land and labour productivity rose together was there ‘agricultural revolution’.

Some of the innovative methods devised by Campbell to address these questions are reflected in these articles. His studies of manorial accounts are not restricted to those from a single estate. The sheer volume of data involved necessitated the development of methods of categorisation, including cluster analysis, which are described here. Despite the breadth of documentation used, Campbell is at pains to discuss any deficiencies and points, in particular, to the difficulties caused by the weighting of his samples of accounts. Methodological precision is accompanied by valuable discussions of terms such as ‘productivity’ and ‘yield’ and the impact of definition on interpretation.

The chronological range of Campbell’s work is also impressive. Two studies published with Mark Overton compare medieval seigneurial agriculture with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century farming practices. They reveal the lack of change in arable yields in parts of England in contrast with the significant increase in stocking densities over the same period, demonstrating the relative under-development of the pastoral sector in c.1300. Closer examinations of trends across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reveal the reduced impact of the market after the Black Death and the substitution of land for labour by cultivators facing sudden changes in the structure of supply and demand.

There are many points in the papers in this volume at which Campbell sets the agenda for future research. He has developed many of the avenues himself, including the comparison and mapping of data from all over England in Seigniorial Agriculture (2000) and England on the Eve of the Black Death (with Ken Bartley, 2006). There are frequent references to and discussion of the peasant sector, which was larger though less well documented than the seigneurial to which most of Campbell’s evidence pertains. Campbell is generally positive about the representativeness of his evidence of agricultural output as a whole, citing the fact that practices on manorial demesnes tended to reflect those in the particular locality in which they were situated rather than those on other manors on the same estate. However, he raises the possibility, on the basis of aggregate calculations, that commercialisation may have been more marked in the non-demesne sector up to 1300 and even questions the assumption that stocking densities were lower on peasant holdings.

Many of the issues discussed in this volume are treated further in Campbell’s publications since 1998. Nevertheless, the breadth of Campbell’s work and the quantity and range of material he has dealt with in the papers presented here mean the volume is of much more than historiographical interest. The importance of Campbell’s assault on the older supply-side models used to understand economic change, his discussion and measurement of commercialisation, and the innovative methods and approaches he has adopted mean the availability of a number of his studies in a single volume is very welcome indeed.