Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany: Studies in Cultural, Social and Economic History (review)

244 Short Notices Parergon 21.1 (2004) other, research-oriented contributions, they reflect very well the variety and vitality of medieval studies in just one institution in the Australian higher education sector. Toby Burrows Scholars’ Centre The University of Western Australia Toch, Michael, Peasants and Jews in Medieval Germany: Studies in Cultural, Social and Economic History (Variorum Collected Studies), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; pp.xiv, 328; RRP £57.50; ISBN 0860788962. Michael Toch has devoted much of his scholarly life to teasing out some of the more obscure aspects of peasant history in Germany and Eastern Europe. For instance, while we know little of the language of German peasants, particularly when they are speaking to one another, he has used small but significant scenes in medieval German literature to consider what aspects of communication between lords and peasants can tell us about their social attitudes and the strategies they used at different times and in different places to maintain their particular interests. He develops some interesting ideas about the economic relationships involved that run counter to the received wisdom about the transition from direct cultivation to peasant tenure in agriculture that developed about the time of the Plague. This relates especially to the lord’s provision of the working capital for his tenants, an aspect of continental farming which did not cross the Channel and so is unfamiliar to historians of England. Agrarian credit of this and other varieties, and its organisation and importance, have been neglected. Much of his work is in such gaps, areas that have received little attention from other historians because of the difficulty and sparseness of the evidence, such as inland transport. His studies of the Jewish communities in Germany their location and function, their establishment and spread, immigration and internal growth, shows urban growth followed in the sixteenth century by rural relocation. Explanations in terms of the pull of opportunity against the push of violence, the threat of anti-Judaism and the rival interests of other power groups in the community are weighed against the evidence. He points to the form of internal migration, in extended family groups, as opposed to the movement historians are accustomed to expect of young single adults that characterises most western Short Notices 245 Parergon 21.1 (2004) internal migration. He also discusses the way in which emigration was promoted by a perceived need to protect capital from expropriation. His analysis of the size of the Jewish communities, and their stratification casts light on their cultural and intellectual development. Perhaps the most interesting article is the reassessment of Verlinden’s work that made the idea of Jewish dominance of the slave trade in the period before 1100 an orthodox historical assumption. This should be set for students as an example of the precise and careful examination of evidence and the nature of proof. Sybil M. Jack University of Sydney ...