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  • §2. - Italy

  • from Chapter VII - Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime
  • Edited by M. M. Postan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 January 1966, pp 340-431

  • Summary

    Italy, in common with the rest of Europe, progressed through a cycle of economic change in the course of the Middle Ages, is now an established commonplace. Two agrarian systems are the customary and the individualistic, came to dispute the soil of medieval Italy; and to each corresponded different methods, extensive and intensive, of agricultural production. As Italian commerce expanded, so the market grew for the products of Italian farming generally, and agriculture everywhere began to respond to changes in international trade. Rural Italy in the Middle Ages experienced radical change has been recognized since the early days of the Agricultural Revolution. In the history of Europe generally it is traditional and convenient to describe rural society in terms of the villa or manorial system, of its rise in the early Middle Ages and its subsequent supersession by the system of putting estates to farm or working them with wage-labour.