Mills in the Medieval Economy: England, 1300-1540 (review)

For people in late medieval Europe, the mill, whether wind or water, was the best-known example of a machine that converted inanimate power to work. In this much-awaited study of the distribution, economics, and technology of English mills from 1300 to 1540, John Langdon describes both the technologies at work and the impact of those technologies on the people who employed them. The study derives from a database of mills from 333 manors—painstakingly assembled and analyzed using a computer program described in an appendix—supplemented with information from court cases and purveyance accounts which help in exploring personal relationships of those involved in milling. Langdon's best guess is that England had about ten thousand mills in 1300 and that they ground 80 percent of the grain while also performing a number of industrial tasks.

Not all manors had mills, but the sheer number guaranteed a wide distribution across the countryside as well as in towns, where mills were even more likely to be found. After the Black Death, the total number of mills dropped and windmills were often replaced by watermills. Owners increasingly leased out their mills for a fixed rent. Langdon found a shift to waterpower for industrial purposes, and he also found that ecclesiastical estates often invested in industrial mills. Rents from mills fell to relatively low levels; this persisted until the mid-sixteenth century.

Perhaps the greatest value of Langdon's book is his clear explanation of how medieval mills worked. The precise and sparse descriptions of vertical versus horizontal and undershot versus overshot design are complemented by line drawings and medieval illustrations. The problem for watermills was controlling the flow of streams and tides, while for windmills the problem was finding a way to set the building solidly in the ground while still being able to turn the sails to catch the wind. The largest investments went into water-control systems and foundations, respectively, and while capital expenditures, especially for millstones, might be high, repair costs equaled original investment on average in about ten years. The critical responsibility for maintenance was laid out in contracts for leasing mills, and Langdon has some difficulty assessing the economics of the division of such responsibilities.

In a justly famous 1935 article in the Annales, Marc Bloch claimed that watermills were economically inefficient but were nevertheless adopted in the High Middle Ages because landlords with the power of ban—or "suit of mill," as it was called in England—could force tenants to use the new devices and so extract a larger share of agricultural production. The study of late-medieval English mills finds little if any support for the argument. According to Langdon, landlords put up more mills than necessary in the thirteenth century, but they did so to impress their tenants as much as to tax them. Because there was competition among mills, charges for their use were typically low, except in northern England.

Langdon finds that investment in mills was tied to the rise and fall of population. By the early sixteenth century merchants were buying mills and leasing them to millers, expecting to profit even though they could no longer coerce farmers to use mills. Above all Langdon finds mills to have been appealing to farmers and landlords, despite the costs and problems of administration and despite questions about the honesty of millers, simply because they were effective laborsaving devices.

Langdon presents abundant tables and graphs to summarize his data, and seven appendixes illustrate the problems of piecing together the history of milling and assessing the reliability of sources. Langdon acknowledges his reliance on the earlier work of Richard Holt, though the mention of Holt and other scholars in the text sometimes becomes intrusive, as does the somewhat self-conscious reporting of how the author did what he did. The frequent references to things said "above" or about to be said "below" suggest some problems of organizing. Certain pieces of especially...