Peasants, Merchants, and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150-1350 (review)

248 Reviews Latin manuscripts. But these specific investigations are balanced by several magisterial and wide-ranging surveys: 'the oldest manuscripts of the Latin Bible', 'the Gospel Book in Celtic lands before A.D. 850', and 'Latin Gospel Books from A.D. 400 to A.D. 800.' Most of these papers were originally published in specialist journals or books of essays, and their re-publication in a single, easily accessible volume is to be welcomed. It is a fitting recognition of McGurk's seminal contribution to the study of these early manuscripts of the Latin Bible and will be a definitive starting-point for researchers in the future. But the coherence of the collection is unfortunately undermined by the lack of any obvious order in the arrangement of the papers within the volume. The specific and the more general are jumbled up together, and papers on the same theme—such as canon tables—are not grouped together. Nor is there a clear chronological or geographical order. This gives a misleading impression of incoherence to what is in fact a coherent and very valuable body of research in this field. Toby Burrows Scholars' Centre University of Western Australia Masschaele, James, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150-1350, N e w York, St Martin's Press, 1997; cloth; pp. xii, 275; 13 maps and diagrams; R.R.P.£35.00, US$45.00. Recent studies on regional, rather than local or national, communit have transformed our understanding of social and economic relationships in medieval Europe. James Masschaele continues this trend as he traces the development of commercialisation within England before 1350, and in particular demonstrates that peasants immersed themselves in deliberate production for the market m u c h earlier than has often been assumed. Masschaele structures his argument around central-place theory, whereby marketing centres are classified according to the scale and relative proportions of 'bulking' (the purchase of goods in small units which are then stored and sold in large quantities) and 'breaking' (the Reviews 249 breaking up of larger wholesale consignments of goods into smaller units for sale) in which they engage. If a centre is well-articulated with other centres, supply and demand are increased for all markets. Clearly, the concurrent development of variously-sized markets and an efficient transport system is essential for the working of such a system. Peasants, Merchants, and Markets begins with an examination of urban production, and finds, in c o m m o n with m a n y other historians, that the leather, textile and victualling trades were dominant, and that a large share of urban resources was spent on agricultural staples. More surprising was the point that the amount of stored goods indicated by lay subsidy assessments was m u c h smaller than would be expected given the trade in those goods carried on in the centres examined. Masschaele suggests, therefore, that it was the countryside rather than the towns which bulked grain and other raw materials. In Chapter Two, the most original of the book in m y opinion, Masschaele substantiates this idea by documenting peasant surpluses from purveyance records: contrary to Malthusian accounts, peasants engaged in high levels of both cereal and livestock production into the fourteenth century. W h e n upper-rank peasants are compared to lords, knights and gentry, it is clear that peasants produced about twice as m u c h as their social superiors. Since peasants held at least two-thirds of the country's taxable (that is surplus to subsistence) wealth, they must have been dominant in production for the market. In Section Three, 'Nodes of Exchange', Masschaele examines the growth of markets, and their siting and timing in relation to each other. Lists of towns sending representatives to parliament and taxation records allow the division of approximately 600 boroughs into 51 regional towns, such as Newcastle, Canterbury and Truro, as well as smaller towns and rural market villages which still had resident merchants. One of the m a n y useful maps in the book shows their distribution. Three further chapters discuss inland trade in terms of trade between towns, and urban and rural trade both in...