Project MUSE®: Past & Present - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Past & Present.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USNumber 188 (2005) - Number 197 (Nov. 2007)Latest Articles: Past & PresentTWOProject MUSE®Past & Present1477-464X0031-2746Latest articles in Past & Present. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Peasant Elites and Village Communities in the South of France, 1200–1350
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231494
<p></p>
The medieval village, said Rodney Hilton, introducing a paper on 'Village Communities in Medieval England' at the 1982 Flaran Colloque, was not an organic or a harmonious community in which everyone played their part. Drawing on his own work on the west midlands, amplified by more recent studies, he described a society in conflict. The fiercest disputes were between communities and their lords, but the community was also divided within itself; it was a stratified society in which the elite both led the resistance to the lord and itself behaved violently, especially towards the lesser villagers.1 Do we find this type of combative and overbearing elite when we look at the sources for the south of France, and in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallPeasant Elites and Village Communities in the South of France, 1200–13502008-02-07text/htmlen-USPeasant Elites and Village Communities in the South of France, 1200–13502008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®605462026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Popular Insurrection and the Black Death: A Comparative View
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231495
<p></p>
Works by Barrington Moore, Jr, Eric Hobsawm, George Rudé, and E. P. Thompson in the 1960s and early 1970s,1 coupled with the student movements of that period, launched a new vogue for the study of revolt in comparative perspective, at least for early modern, modern, contemporary Europe and elsewhere around the globe. Curiously, this trend did not extend to medieval Europe, despite the period's large-scale revolts, especially after the Black Death. There are two exceptions, both now over thirty years old—Rodney Hilton's Bondmen Made Free and Michel Mollat and Philippe Wolff's Ongles bleus.2 Both have become standard texts for teaching; both have stimulated further research, but this research has tended to focus on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallPopular Insurrection and the Black Death: A Comparative View2008-02-07text/htmlen-USPopular Insurrection and the Black Death: A Comparative View2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®1282072026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Hilton, Lordship and the Culture of the Gentry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231496
<p></p>
The history of the gentry was not one of Rodney Hilton's central concerns. In much of what he wrote—on the structure of society, on the constitution of estates, on lord-peasant relations, on towns in feudal society—the gentry tended to be subsumed within the broader, secular landowning class. This was so, partly because lesser families have left comparatively little in terms of private records compared to great landowners, both secular and ecclesiastical, but also because the structure and role of the gentry per se were not his prime interests. He was very much aware, however, of problems surrounding status: of the changing nature of knighthood, for example, of the issue of gentility, and of the question of social
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallHilton, Lordship and the Culture of the Gentry2008-02-07text/htmlen-USHilton, Lordship and the Culture of the Gentry2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®1130872026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Lordship and Community: Northern Spain on the Eve of the Year 1000
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231497
<p></p>
Rodney was my colleague when I came to Birmingham in 1970 to my first teaching job. Working with him—designing courses, co-teaching, graduate seminars—was a revelation and has had a profound impact on the work I have tried to do ever since. What follows picks up some of the themes which always interested him, but does so in the context of northern Spain in the tenth century—northern Spain because the extension of lordship is a key issue in historical writing about social change in the central middle ages; the tenth century because there is a large mass of available text, following an era of very little surviving written material, and this allows us to look into the nature of peasant society both before and during
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallLordship and Community: Northern Spain on the Eve of the Year 10002008-02-07text/htmlen-USLordship and Community: Northern Spain on the Eve of the Year 10002008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®1141372026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07English Towns and the Transition c.1450–1550
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231498
<p></p>
There are few historical issues of more relevance to a critical understanding of the economic and political workings of today's societies, and their future, than 'the transition from feudalism to capitalism'. In association with its contemporary resonance, the 'transition debate' has invigorated historical theory and practice by generating a sense of structural unity to long periods of time. The debate has recognized the potential of the whole range of people's experiences and actions to determine change. State politics and everyday life are brought together and both have a claim to historical significance. In this spirit I intend in this essay to develop some new lines of inquiry on the transition in England by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallEnglish Towns and the Transition c.1450–15502008-02-07text/htmlen-USEnglish Towns and the Transition c.1450–15502008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®749782026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Preface
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231499
<p></p>
The origins of this book are described in the Introduction. Briefly, Rodney Hilton's friends, colleagues and admirers, in the year after his death in 2002, participated in a conference not just to celebrate his work, but to indicate new directions in the historical themes to which he gave special prominence. The venture was encouraged and assisted by Jean Birrell, Rodney's widow, who also translated the paper by Monique Bourin. The essays in this book were presented as papers at the conference.The conference attracted eighty participants, who demonstrated Rodney Hilton's international reputation by travelling from twelve different countries. The event was organized impeccably by Heather Swanson, and facilities were
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallPreface2008-02-07text/htmlen-USPreface2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®34802026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Introduction. Rodney Hilton, Medieval Historian
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231500
<p></p>
This book has an unusual background, and the purpose of this introduction is to explain how it came into existence. It is of course commonplace for a senior and distinguished historian such as Rodney Hilton to be presented with a volume of essays in his honour, and indeed such a book was given to him and published in 1983, at the time of his retirement.1 When he died in 2002, there was a strong and widely held feeling that some gathering in his memory was needed, at which his many friends and admirers from different parts of the world could express their admiration for him. We immediately thought how inappropriate it would be to mark his passing with lengthy expressions of praise and affection, partly because one
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallIntroduction. Rodney Hilton, Medieval Historian2008-02-07text/htmlen-USIntroduction. Rodney Hilton, Medieval Historian2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®388832026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07The Ineffectiveness of Lordship in England, 1200–1400
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231501
<p></p>
This essay is concerned with the English aristocracy, meaning lay and clerical lords, from the gentry to dukes and archbishops, mainly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It examines critically the reputation that the lords have gained in modern times for playing a very decisive and forceful role in the economy.1The aristocracy, especially the magnates, are often depicted as attaining a pinnacle of economic success in the thirteenth century. They had been faced with grave problems around 1200, as inflation threatened to reduce the value of their fixed incomes, and a predatory Angevin monarchy increased its financial demands on them. By the end of the thirteenth century, they had increased their landed
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallThe Ineffectiveness of Lordship in England, 1200–14002008-02-07text/htmlen-USThe Ineffectiveness of Lordship in England, 1200–14002008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®993002026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Rodney Hilton, Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231502
<p></p>
A founding member of the Historians' Group of the Communist Party, of the journal Past and Present, and a major force in a distinctive and distinguished School of History at the University of Birmingham, Rodney Hilton was among the most notable medieval historians of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was also the most influential of a small number of Marxist medievalists in Britain and Continental Europe who practiced their craft before the renaissance of Marxist and left-wing history after 1968. Surprisingly, therefore, his work's historiographies and theoretical significance has not attracted much attention.1Although Hilton was, first and foremost, a 'historian's historian', and made his most lasting
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallRodney Hilton, Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism2008-02-07text/htmlen-USRodney Hilton, Marxism and the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®1072022026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Church Lords and English Urban Investment in the Later Middle Ages
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231503
<p></p>
Rodney Hilton's seminal article, 'Some Problems of Urban Real Property in the Middle Ages', contrasted the small-scale merchant acquisition of urban real property in the thirteenth century with the larger-scale institutional, primarily guild, property accumulations found in the fifteenth century.1 This paper seeks to extend this analysis by looking at the acquisition of property by the church in English towns between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It uses mortmain licences that included grants of property in towns in the midlands in association with other printed medieval material available for the region. It seeks to contribute to the important question of the relationship between lordship and urban
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallChurch Lords and English Urban Investment in the Later Middle Ages2008-02-07text/htmlen-USChurch Lords and English Urban Investment in the Later Middle Ages2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®1160842026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07What if the Sea were Different? Urbanization in Medieval Norway
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231504
<p></p>
When Sir Michael Postan described medieval towns as 'non-feudal islands in the feudal seas' he was expressing the conviction that the urbanization of the middle ages was an exotic intrusion into a feudal society based on subsistence agriculture, the village and the castle.1 Postan knew about the volume of international commerce and acknowledged its role in the local economy. In insisting, however, that the urban merchants needed to establish a legal and political detachment from the knights and villeins of the countryside, he lent support to a traditional view of urbanization, associated most with the name of Henri Pirenne, that feudal society was essentially inimical to trade and traders. Attributing the rise of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallWhat if the Sea were Different? Urbanization in Medieval Norway2008-02-07text/htmlen-USWhat if the Sea were Different? Urbanization in Medieval Norway2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®841562026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Religious Dissent, Social Revolt and 'Ideology'
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231506
<p></p>
This essay takes up a historiographical problem: the relation between the movement of religious dissent provoked by John Wyclif in the 1370s and the English peasant rising of 1381.1 It is, strictly considered, a historiographical problem and not a historical one: since not a whit of compelling evidence has been successfully adduced in support of any direct relation, the real question is not so much whether there was one as why some of us keep looking for one. I once argued the influence of religious dissent on (or, better, the appropriation of it by) the 1381 rebels,2 and now think that that argument, though not implausible, poses the wrong question; so the present essay involves a good deal of retractio and a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallReligious Dissent, Social Revolt and 'Ideology'2008-02-07text/htmlen-USReligious Dissent, Social Revolt and 'Ideology'2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®708572026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Changing Patterns of Urban Conflict in Late Medieval Castile
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231507
<p></p>
Medieval society, in Rodney Hilton's masterly portrayal, was profoundly shaped by the antagonism between rural landlords and peasants. Although towns and cities were also 'one of its essential constitutive components', they, he insisted, should not be viewed as the loci of fundamental conflicts emerging from feudal relations.1 Parallel to their distinctive economic structures, important differences can also be identified in the character of the social relations and conflicts in both town and country.Lords and peasants lived in worlds apart: landlords tended to be absentees. Feudal powers interfered regularly in local life by appropriating economic surplus, which they often secured through the control of monopolies
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallChanging Patterns of Urban Conflict in Late Medieval Castile2008-02-07text/htmlen-USChanging Patterns of Urban Conflict in Late Medieval Castile2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®745672026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07A Divided Class? Peasants and Peasant Communities in Later Medieval England
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231508
<p></p>
Few areas in the study of medieval peasants have attracted quite as much disagreement as the debate over peasant communities. Historians cannot escape their own contemporary preoccupations and experiences, and it seems to be particularly in the discussions of communal living that approaches have been influenced by longings for a better world.One area of concern has been the changes after the Black Death of 1348-9. Some historians have argued that both familial ties and communal bonds were weakened by a rise of individualism in English villages after 1349.2 They look back to a largely imaginary era of the medieval village, which was defined by cooperation and solidarity, before the demographic collapse, when the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallA Divided Class? Peasants and Peasant Communities in Later Medieval England2008-02-07text/htmlen-USA Divided Class? Peasants and Peasant Communities in Later Medieval England2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®937682026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Serfdom and Freedom in Medieval England: A Reply to the Revisionists
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231509
<p></p>
Historians of medieval England have studied serfdom extensively since the nineteenth century. However, in the 1960s M. M. Postan criticized them for paying more attention to the peasants' legal status than to their economic conditions and for overestimating the negative effects of serfdom. He claimed that the chief disabilities of servile status were balanced by the benefits of landholding and although the serfs were downgraded socially they could redeem their freedom by paying a reasonable sum of money to their lord. The fact that only a few of those who could have afforded it purchased their freedom was interpreted by him as an indication that the serfs were more interested in land acquisition than in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallSerfdom and Freedom in Medieval England: A Reply to the Revisionists2008-02-07text/htmlen-USSerfdom and Freedom in Medieval England: A Reply to the Revisionists2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®375982026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07English and French Towns in the Sixteenth Century
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231510
<p></p>
Comparative history, to paraphrase Rodney Hilton in the first line of his last book English and French Towns in Feudal Society, 'is rather a risky venture'.1 Nevertheless, it is a valuable exercise for determining what is peculiar in a particular national context, as long as the historian is aware of the pitfalls of generalization. Hilton in this book set out to compare the relative integration of English and French urban communities into medieval economic and social structures, as well as their role in feudal society. He identified a number of trends which he posited would be consolidated in the following centuries, in particular, the dominance of officialdom in France and of a mercantile elite in England. The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallEnglish and French Towns in the Sixteenth Century2008-02-07text/htmlen-USEnglish and French Towns in the Sixteenth Century2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®946642026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Lordship and the Peasant Economy, c. 1250– c. 1400: Robert Kyng and the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231511
<p></p>
The nature of production under feudalism was, according to Maurice Dobb, 'petty'. The basic social relation, again to follow Dobb—as numerous other Marxist commentators and historians—rested upon the extraction of the surplus production of these petty producers, an extraction achieved by extra-economic compulsion. That extra-economic compulsion varied according to the type of feudal rent levied.1Rodney Hilton, a key player in that first generation of British Marxists which included Dobb, tested these fundamental relations of production throughout his work as a historian and recognized, as a Marxist, that, since 'variations in the incomes of the landed ruling class and its state . . . were crucial', it was the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallLordship and the Peasant Economy, c. 1250– c. 1400: Robert Kyng and the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds2008-02-07text/htmlen-USLordship and the Peasant Economy, c. 1250– c. 1400: Robert Kyng and the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®772852026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07The Transition in the Low Countries: Wage Labour as an Indicator of the Rise of Capitalism in the Countryside, 1300–1700
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231512
<p></p>
This article deals with the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The use of these terms is no longer self-evident, perhaps because of their ideological charge. Instead, most historians now prefer to use such vague notions as 'modernization' and 'rationalization', often without being more specific. We also hear of 'the transition from the medieval to the early modern society', as if this transition involved no more than crossing a chronological boundary. This lack of specificity hampers research. Here we will use what is perhaps a subjective and very restricted but nevertheless sharp definition of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, namely the transformation of a society dominated by small, independent
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallThe Transition in the Low Countries: Wage Labour as an Indicator of the Rise of Capitalism in the Countryside, 1300–17002008-02-07text/htmlen-USThe Transition in the Low Countries: Wage Labour as an Indicator of the Rise of Capitalism in the Countryside, 1300–17002008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®968982026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Peasant Politics and Class Consciousness: The Norfolk Rebellions of 1381 and 1549 Compared
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231513
<p></p>
The county of Norfolk was heavily involved in England's two largest peasant rebellions, in 1381 and 1549. There is no question that each revolt commandedwidespread popular support, and as is argued below, the rebels were drawn from a cross-section of the rural population. Whether or not these were peasant rebellions is partly a question of whether one regards the rural population of Norfolk as peasants, an issue discussed elsewhere.2 However, they were also peasant rebellions in another sense. Other large popular revolts of this period, such as the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536, or the Western Rebellion of 1549 involved alliances between gentlemen and the commons or ordinary rebels. They were provoked partly by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallPeasant Politics and Class Consciousness: The Norfolk Rebellions of 1381 and 1549 Compared2008-02-07text/htmlen-USPeasant Politics and Class Consciousness: The Norfolk Rebellions of 1381 and 1549 Compared2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®951852026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Conclusions
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231514
<p></p>
The articles in this book reflect Rodney Hilton's work remarkably well. They show us a multi-faceted set of approaches, illuminating medieval England and continental Europe from a great variety of directions, but at the core of them is a set of common assumptions and problems: that the study of the peasantry is central, that one of the most illuminating ways into understanding medieval society is through the study of conflict, that the socio-economic dynamism of the central and later middle ages had very complex roots, and that it is crucially important to tease them all out and then try to work out how they related to each other. Rodney himself, indeed, across his working life, increasingly recognized how complex
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallConclusions2008-02-07text/htmlen-USConclusions2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®444242026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07Exploring Difference within Rural Communities in the Northern Iberian Kingdoms, 1000–1300
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231515
<p></p>
Historical studies in Spain have been dramatically revitalized since the 1970s and 1980s, not just for the medieval period but in general. This has meant the gradual integration of Spanish work into debates and developments in other countries. The myth of Spanish difference, for long so carefully fostered by official ideology in almost every sphere, was thus questioned in its medieval dimensions as well. It is not my intention here, however, to address these historiographical developments, which are well known.2 Rather, I will examine some issues relating to peasant communities in the north of the peninsula, in particular in regard to internal forms of inequality, a theme on which Rodney Hilton wrote many
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallExploring Difference within Rural Communities in the Northern Iberian Kingdoms, 1000–13002008-02-07text/htmlen-USExploring Difference within Rural Communities in the Northern Iberian Kingdoms, 1000–13002008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®767982026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07List of Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/231516
<p></p>
Isabel Alfonso Antón, is Investigadora Científica at the Instituto de Historia CSIC. Madrid. Her research covers medieval rural history, the Cistercians, and legal and political culture. Her publications in English include the co-edition of Building Legitimacy. Political Discourses and Forms of Legitimation in Medieval Societies (2004), and The Rural History of Medieval European Societies. Trends and Perspectives (The Medieval Countryside, 1). Her relationship to Rodney Hilton was based for many years on both academic and personal friendship.
Jean Birrell is Honorary Fellow, Institute for Advanced Research in the Arts and Social Sciences, University of Birmingham. She studied history at the University of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/306/image/coversmallList of Contributors2008-02-07text/htmlen-USList of Contributors2008-02-072008TWOProject MUSE®122802026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002008-02-07