John Hatcher

In this fresh approach to the history of the Black Death, John Hatcher, a world-renowned scholar of the Middle Ages, recreates everyday life in a mid-fourteenth century rural English village. By focusing on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived—and died—during the Black Death (1345–50 AD), Hatcher vividly places the reader directly into those tumultuous years and describes in fascinating detail the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague. Dramatic scenes portray how contemporaries must have experienced and thought about the momentous events—and how they tried to make sense of it all.

This book surveys the most influential theoretical approaches adopted for the study of medieval economy and society. It offers an accessible introduction to medieval economic history, an up-to-date critique of established models, and a succinct treatise on historiographical method.

Middle Ages and the Plague

This is the first volume which completes the definitive five-volume History of the British Coal Industry. Well before 1700 Britain had become heavily dependent upon coal for its fuel, and coal mining had taken its place among the nation's staple industries. Hatcher traces the production and trade of coal from the intermittent small-scale activity which prevailed in the Middle Ages to the rapid expansion and rising importance which characterized the early modern era. Thoroughly grounded in a formidable range of sources, the book explores the economics and management of mining, the productivity and progress of technology. Hatcher examines the owners and operators of collieries and the sources of mining capital, as well as the colliers themselves, their working conditions, and earnings. He argues that the spectacular growth of coal output in this period was achieved more through evolutionary than revolutionary processes.

This study is centred on the Cornish manorial estates of the Duchy of Cornwall in the later Middle Ages, and has been compiled from a very full and hitherto neglected series of records, the completeness of which is perhaps unique for a lay estate. Most aspects of the history of the estates have been recorded and those which differed from other regions of England have been stressed. In order to place the Duchy estates within their regional context Dr Hatcher has studied a wide range of documents and produced a mass of new evidence concerning tin-mining, fishing, trade, towns and local industry in Cornwall and Devon. He shows, for example, that agricultural prosperity in later medieval Cornwall followed an exceptional course, and was determined by a series of interconnected changes within the regional economy, with a much less direct and immediate causal link than is commonly assumed between declining population after 1349 and agricultural recession. The intimate connexions between agriculture. and industry and commerce are additionally emphasized by the manifold business interests of leading Duchy tenants.

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Very Good, 363pp. D/j not price-clipped, light creasing to the upper edge ; overall condition otherwise almost as new.

La morte nera del titolo è l'epidemia che, giunta in Europa nel 1347, si diffonde attraverso le città del Mediterraneo, l'ovest dell'Italia, la Francia meridionale, per poi risalire più a nord, sempre preceduta da un'onda di leggende sul morbo e frenetici passaparola. Siamo in Inghilterra, nella primavera del 1349, in una tranquilla e operosa comunità, chiamata Walsham. L'arrivo della peste in questo villaggio rurale della contea del Suffolk, tra l'aprile e il giugno del 1349, è la popolazione locale viene letteralmente dimezzata. Il volume è un esperimento letterario di docudrama, in cui il professore di Storia dell'Università di Cambridge racconta la storia dell'epidemia, dei personaggi e degli eventi di Walsham, mescolando realtà e finzione. Si configura un'indagine storica sulla vita quotidiana in Inghilterra ai tempi della peste nera, rigorosamente basata sui documenti, i cosiddetti registri di corte perfettamente conservati nel paesino di Walsham, che, al tempo stesso, tiene avvinto il lettore nella suspense quasi cinematografica dell'incalzante avanzare di questo morbo letale.