IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ehsrev/v67y2014i2p435-462.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of drought in early fourteenth-century England

Author

Listed:
  • David Stone

Abstract

type="main"> Climatic change is currently viewed as one of the main causes of the so-called crisis of the early fourteenth century. It is well established that England saw increased storminess and heavy rainfall in this period, but this article suggests that the impact of drought—which became a common feature of the English climate during the 1320s and early 1330s—has been overlooked. Based primarily on a detailed analysis of account rolls for over 60 of the best-documented manors in this period, the article establishes that drought brought devastating harvest failure and caused severe outbreaks of a number of diseases, plausibly including enteric infections, malaria, and winter and spring fevers. As a result, mortality surged and population levels fell in communities in affected regions, which were mainly confined to the southern and eastern counties of England. The article concludes that such regional variation significantly affects our understanding of demographic, agricultural, and even fiscal trends in this period. Although we should not disregard the human factors influencing the impact of environmental shocks, England was plainly struck with indubitable force by extreme weather in this pivotal phase of the medieval economy.

Suggested Citation

  • David Stone, 2014. "The impact of drought in early fourteenth-century England," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(2), pages 435-462, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:67:y:2014:i:2:p:435-462
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-0289.12035
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce M. S. Campbell, 2008. "Benchmarking medieval economic development: England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, c.12901," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 61(4), pages 896-945, November.
    2. Hatcher, John & Bailey, Mark, 2001. "Modelling the Middle Ages: The History and Theory of England's Economic Development," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199244126.
    3. Bruce M. S. Campbell, 2010. "Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre‐industrial England," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(2), pages 281-314, May.
    4. Harvey, Barbara, 1977. "Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198224495.
    5. Philip Slavin, 2012. "The Great Bovine Pestilence and its economic and environmental consequences in England and Wales, 1318–50," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 65(4), pages 1239-1266, November.
    6. J. Z. Titow, 1961. "Some Evidence of the Thirteenth Century Population Increase," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 14(2), pages 218-224, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist & Andrea Seim & Heli Huhtamaa, 2021. "Climate and society in European history," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(2), March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruce M. S. Campbell, 2010. "Nature as historical protagonist: environment and society in pre‐industrial England," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(2), pages 281-314, May.
    2. Stephen H. Rigby, 2010. "Urban population in late medieval England: the evidence of the lay subsidies," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(2), pages 393-417, May.
    3. Eric B. Schneider, 2014. "Prices and production: agricultural supply response in fourteenth-century England," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(1), pages 66-91, February.
    4. Mark Bailey, 2009. "Villeinage in England: a regional case study, c.1250–c.13491," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 62(2), pages 430-457, May.
    5. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist & Andrea Seim & Heli Huhtamaa, 2021. "Climate and society in European history," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(2), March.
    6. Thomas Barnebeck Andersen & Jeanet Bentzen & Carl‐Johan Dalgaard & Paul Sharp, 2017. "Pre‐reformation Roots of the Protestant Ethic," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(604), pages 1756-1793, September.
    7. Rudolf Cesaretti & José Lobo & Luís M A Bettencourt & Scott G Ortman & Michael E Smith, 2016. "Population-Area Relationship for Medieval European Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-27, October.
    8. Lars Boerner & Oliver Volckart, 2009. "Currency unions, optimal currency areas and the integration of financial markets: Central Europe, 14-16thcenturies," Working Papers 9012, Economic History Society.
    9. Qing Pei & David D Zhang & Harry F Lee & Guodong Li, 2014. "Climate Change and Macro-Economic Cycles in Pre-Industrial Europe," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-8, February.
    10. Stephen Broadberry & Bruce Campbell & Alexander Klein & Mark Overton, 2010. "British economic growth, 1300-1850: some preliminary estimates," Working Papers 10009, Economic History Society.
    11. Stuetzer, Michael & Obschonka, Martin & Audretsch, David B. & Wyrwich, Michael & Rentfrow, Peter J. & Coombes, Mike & Shaw-Taylor, Leigh & Satchell, Max, 2016. "Industry structure, entrepreneurship, and culture: An empirical analysis using historical coalfields," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 52-72.
    12. Gregory Clark, 2005. "The Long March of History: Farm Wages, Population and Economic Growth, England 1209-1869," Working Papers 170, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    13. Thomas Barnebeck Andersen & Jeanet Bentzen & Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Paul Sharp, 2010. "Religious Orders and Growth through Cultural Change in Pre-Industrial England," DEGIT Conference Papers c015_036, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    14. Christopher Gerrard & David Petley, 2013. "A risk society? Environmental hazards, risk and resilience in the later Middle Ages in Europe," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 69(1), pages 1051-1079, October.
    15. Hervé Dumez & Alain Jeunemaître, 2005. "La démarche narrative en économie," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 56(4), pages 983-1005.
    16. Leonardo Ridolfi, 2017. "Six centuries of real wages in France from Louis IX to Napoleon III: 1250-1860," LEM Papers Series 2017/14, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    17. Heibø Modalsli, Jørgen, 2011. "Solow meets Marx: Economic growth and the emergence of social class," Memorandum 21/2011, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    18. Dobie, Alisdair, 2015. "The role of the general and provincial chapters in improving and enforcing accounting, financial and management controls in Benedictine monasteries in England 1215–1444," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 142-158.
    19. Boerner, Lars & Volckart, Oliver, 2011. "The utility of a common coinage: Currency unions and the integration of money markets in late Medieval Central Europe," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 53-65, January.
    20. Obschonka, Martin & Stuetzer, Michael & Rentfrow, Peter J. & Shaw-Taylor, Leigh & Satchell, Max & Silbereisen, Rainer K. & Potter, Jeff & Gosling, Samuel D., 2018. "In the shadow of coal: How large-scale industries contributed to present-day regional differences in personality and well-being," MPRA Paper 89645, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:67:y:2014:i:2:p:435-462. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehsukea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.