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s i x PRICES AND WAGES: A REEVALUATION Shifting the focus away from agrarian output and GDP to an analysis of prices and wages for Egypt and England will allow us to estimate relative changes in income per capita. The overall picture will also provide crucial information about the relative changes in the two agrarian economies. The data for prices and wages provided for Egypt and England is abundant in comparison with the other quantitative data assessed in this chapter. The price and wage “scissors” also stand in stark contrast to each other. Briefly put, the overall picture in England after the plagues is that grain prices dropped and wages rose. In Egypt, the opposite occurred : grain prices rose while wages dropped. Although there are some complicating features that will be discussed, the opposing direction of the scissors in the two countries (after the plagues) is unmistakable. A comparison of the purchasing power of wages for grain reveals a dramatic picture. The section that follows balances a set of prices and wages from 1300 to 1350 with a matching set from 1440 to 1490. The two periods form a good comparison with each other for several reasons. The objective is to demonstrate the long-term effects that demographic decline had on prices and wages in the two economies. For a comparison, two periods of equal length bear the most consistent possible measures. Fifty years serves as the best fit for these two fixed spans of time. The year 1300 is the best starting date, since price data for Egypt is scarcer before the start of the fourteenth century. Moreover, commencing Egypt’s price series in 1300 allows us to take account of the expansion in dikes and canals carried out by the early Mamluk sultanate. During the second half of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century, the rulers of Egypt were able to increase the amount of arable land by as much as 91 t h e b l a c k d e a t h i n e g y p t a n d e n g l a n d 92 fifty percent.1 The success of the early Mamluk regime in stimulating agrarian development had a significant impact on prices, and is as crucial to an accurate interpretation of the economic trajectory of Egypt from 1300 to 1500 as the catastrophic failure of the later regime to maintain agricultural productivity after the demographic collapse. The year 1350 (or rather 1347 in Egypt and 1348 in England, when the initial plagues struck) is an obvious end point for the first price series. The year 1440 is an appropriate starting point for the second fifty-year series. Since it is some ninety years after the initial plague hit both countries , it allows for economic events triggered by demographic collapse to have played themselves out. Both countries were close to reaching the nadir of population by 1440, with the worst plague in Egypt (after the Black Death itself) occurring in 1429–1430. By 1440, enough time had passed for the reactionary efforts of English landlords—as expressed in the Statute of Labourers—to fade into oblivion. In Egypt by 1440, the effects of the landholding system under demographic strain had taken much of their toll on the dike-and-canal system. The year 1440 is an excellent starting point for Egypt if reliable comparative indicators of prices in precious metals are to be used. Before 1440, Egypt had been subject to wild fluctuations in the value of its copper currency. After 1440, the value of copper currency, as expressed in the dirham min al-fulus (its money of account) had become relatively stable. Equally or more importantly, by 1440 silver had once again (as in the period 1300–1350) become a currency of frequent, perhaps comprehensive, usage. Before 1440, silver had been so scarce that in the early fifteenth century it was effectively absent from the Egyptian economy. By starting at 1440, we can use silver as a comparative index. If the starting point for the second data set were placed before 1440, only gold would be available for a preciousmetal comparison. Although gold will be used here to back up silver for comparison, it is a more tenuous measure of value for 1300–1350, since it was neither minted nor widespread in England during the early fourteenth century.2 (The problems associated with using nominal currency, i.e., pence or...

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