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14 results

  • Agricultural production and installations in Byzantine Cappadocia: a case study focusing on Mavrucandere

  • Nilüfer Peker
  • Journal:
    Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies / Volume 44 / Issue 1 / April 2020
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 February 2020, pp. 40-61
    Print publication:
    April 2020

  • While there has been extensive research conducted on Byzantine religious architecture in Cappadocia, little work has been done on agricultural installations there. The valley of Mavrucandere in Cappadocia contains a settlement which has a remarkable agrarian installation complex. Resembling a factory, this area highlights the architectural and the organizational structure of the wine-presses in Cappadocia. In the light of the new findings, this article aims to examine the organization of the wine-making process, the location of the installations in the settlement, and the importance of the installations for the region's trade activities during the Byzantine period.

  • 22 - Drafting the peace

  • from Part IV - The search for peace
  • Edited by Jay Winter, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the First World War
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    09 January 2014, pp 606-637

  • Summary

    This chapter focuses on the state of the rural economy, with the attempts of the state to regulate the production and pricing of agrarian produce, and with the unintended side-effects of these interventions. It explains the impact of the Great War on agrarian society at the regional level. In all belligerent countries, the war had a tremendous impact on the agrarian economy. The first major effect of the war was an unprecedented presence of state policies and state officials in the countryside. The most important external factor that affected agricultural production among the Central Powers Austria-Hungary and Germany was the Allied blockade, which effectively sealed off imports of both agricultural produce and fertiliser. The war also affected the social fabric of rural society, exacerbated or transformed existing social fault lines within village communities, while at the same time bringing new forms of conflict to the fore.

  • Feeding people is easy: but we have to re-think the world from first principles

  • Colin Tudge
  • Journal:
    Public Health Nutrition / Volume 8 / Issue 6a / September 2005
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 January 2007, pp. 716-723
    • Article
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  • Objective

    Agriculture designed to make best use of landscape and to be maximally sustainable would also provide food of the highest nutritional and gastronomic standards, and would inevitably employ a great many people. Thus it would solve the world's food problems, and its principal social problem, at a stroke. But agriculture in practice is designed for a quite different purpose – to generate wealth, in the cause of ‘economic growth’. The pressing need is not for more science and technology, but to recognise the true cause of the problems and to re-think priorities.

    Conclusion

    We could all be well fed. Indeed, everyone in the world who is ever likely to be born could be fed to the highest standards of gastronomy as well as of nutrition until humanity itself comes to an end. We already have most of the necessary technique – perhaps all that is needed. We could always do with more excellent science but we need not depend, as we are often told from on high, on the next technological fix. The methods that can provide excellent food would also create a beautiful environment, with plenty of scope for other creatures, and agreeable and stable agrarian economies with satisfying jobs for all.

    In reality, in absolute contrast, we have created a world in which almost a billion are chronically undernourished; another billion are horribly overnourished, so that obesity and diabetes are epidemic, and rising; a billion live on less than two dollars a day; and a billion live in urban slums – a figure set to increase and probably at least to double over the next half century; while other species are disappearing so fast that biologists speak of mass extinction.

  • 19 - The condition of the rural population

  • from PART VI - LATE MEDIEVAL SOCIETY (c. 1350–1520)
  • Edited by Knut Helle, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Scandinavia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    04 September 2003, pp 581-610

  • Summary

    Rural society in Scandinavia was marked by the repercussions of a dramatic loss of population well into the second half of the fifteenth century when the first signs of recovery manifested themselves in some areas. Nobles and the Church were the dominant landowners in Denmark at the end of the Middle Ages, possessing together 75 per cent of the farms, but there were districts in the peripheral forested areas where freehold farms could amount to 50 per cent of the total. As a consequence of the late medieval loss of population the profitability of certain forms of agricultural production decreased radically, destabilising the economy of those involved. On the other hand, large groups of the rural population profited from the changes that occurred in the period of crisis. Auxiliary means of livelihood often permitted farmers to accumulate wealth. In the course of the high Middle Ages, the rural population of Scandinavia came to comprise only legally free persons.

  • 12 - Rome and Italy

  • from PART IV - ROME, ITALY AND THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 405-443

  • Summary

    Augustus had started the process of making Rome, as a matter of policy, a worthy capital of the world. Travelling to Rome, city of wonders in a land of wonders, was a special experience. In the world of thinking, speaking and writing, Rome was the centre too, the norm and exemplar of Antonine cities. The architecture of Rome was the greatest of its wonders. The cities of Italy in the Augustan period had functioned as channels of horizontal and vertical social mobility. In the Antonine period, moreover, there was more to economic life than landowning. The nature of production in Italy in this period constitutes one of the most problematic sets of questions in ancient economic history. In the Flavian and Trajanic period, the evidence suggests a burgeoning of the cash-crop based, villa-centred, agrarian economy which had characterized the rural landscape of large parts of Italy since the middle Republic.

  • 24 - Trade

  • from PART Va - ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 710-740

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses all forms of market exchange including everything from local trade in which very little transport of goods might be involved to trade over long distances, both inside and outside the Roman empire. It talks about what is now known about patterns of trade in various commodities, about the social and institutional mechanisms by which trade was conducted, and about the role of governments. The main geographical patterns of long-distance trade were determined by the location of these markets and of the centres of production or supply. Many merchants avoided specialization, and for this reason among others it is artificial to discuss Roman trade commodity by commodity. It remains true that reasons of technology and of social structure prevented the Romans from replacing their agrarian economy, in which the mass of the population lived not much above subsistence level, with a more dynamic system.

  • 23 - The land

  • from PART Va - ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 679-709

  • Summary

    In the Graeco-Roman world land was the source of subsistence and of wealth. Land was looked to primarily for food. This chapter begins with an assessment of the food-producing capacities of the territories making up the Roman empire and the manner in which they were tapped, against the background of the opportunities offered and constraints imposed by the physical environment. Consideration is given to developments in the agrarian economy in our period; expansion of the area under cultivation and the issue of technological progress; patterns of land-holding and methods of managing and working the land; and, finally, agricultural productivity. The period of the Principate witnessed the expansion of agriculture, especially in the provinces of the West. Crop performance and productivity levels, were governed by a number of variables. For convenience two groups of four are divided: on the one hand, weather, seed quality, soil and technology: on the other, the supply of land, labour and seed-corn, and proprietorial attitudes.

  • 1 - Ecology and demography

  • Sugata Bose, Tufts University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 March 1993, pp 8-37

  • Summary

    In 1770, the agrarian scene in Bengal was marked by the scarcity of people and vast stretches of uncultivated fertile land. Two centuries later, land in the west and east Bengals has some of the highest densities of population. The turbulent hydrography of Bengal's great rivers has had a close bearing on the agrarian economy of Bengal. The ecology of the Bakarganj district cut across by numerous streams gave rise to an extraordinary pattern of subinfeudation under substantial farmers known as haoladars to facilitate the work of reclamation. The demographic behaviour of west and east Bengal diverged sharply from the middle of the nineteenth century to about 1920. The final phase of demographic cycles in Bengal has been characterized by declining per capita output in a context of the generation of absolute surplus labour. Price movements of land and its products, as well as flows of credit for financing cultivation, interacted with the parameters set by demography.

  • 7 - Rome and Italy in the second century B.C.

  • Edited by A. E. Astin, F. W. Walbank, M. W. Frederiksen, R. M. Ogilvie
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    07 December 1989, pp 197-243

  • Summary

    The ager Campanus have been the only territory to become Roman ager publicus in its entirety, complete with buildings, although it is thought by some that Telesia also had all of its territory confiscated. It is generally thought that Rome confiscated the best arable land and that this was usually turned into pasture, thus contributing to the destruction of small and medium-sized farms. There is undoubted evidence that this change of use did occur in certain specific areas, but it cannot be considered the norm, as the conditions and methods of farming in second-century Italy were extremely varied. During the second century BC. The establishment and spread of Rome's political predominance in the Mediterranean basin brought with it growing commercial and economic expansion as well as the benefits that sprang directly from the military victories. The transformation of society and of the agrarian economy was but the final unfolding of a situation which had been developing since the third century.

  • XI - Price Movements and Fluctuations in Economic Activity (1860–1947)

  • from PART II - THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MODERN ECONOMY
  • Edited by Dharma Kumar, Meghnad Desai
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    10 March 1983, pp 878-904

  • Summary

    The period 1860 to 1947 was one in which market activity in India appears to have changed substantially. Price data are among the tracks of these changes in market activity. This chapter begins with a short examination of price movements over the entire period, and then moves to a longer examination of the forces determining agricultural prices in India and of the changes in these forces which occurred during this period. Next, it covers the prices of non-agricultural commodities and export and import prices. Relative movements of agricultural and non-agricultural prices and the potential impact of such movements on income distribution are also explained in the chapter. In industrial economies it is generally expected that short periods of rising prices are accompanied by expanding economic activity. Investment will be increasing, output will be expanding, and prices for factors will be bid up. The chapter considers how forces determining price movements may influence the level of economic activity.

  • 1 - Northern and Central India

  • from II - Agrarian Relations
  • Edited by Dharma Kumar, Meghnad Desai
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    10 March 1983, pp 36-86

  • Summary

    The upper Gangetic region, which today falls largely within the boundaries of Uttar Pradesh, exercised a palmary influence on the evolution of the Indian landholding system in the colonial period. When the British annexed the upper Gangetic region and formed the Ceded and Conquered Provinces in 1801-03, they at first made considerable use of the magnate element for local revenue collection purposes. Apart from increasing the importance of cash in the agrarian economy, the other important change effected by the British revenue system in the first half of the nineteenth century was to make the incidence of the revenue demand more uniform, at least within individual districts. The last half-century of British rule in the United Provinces witnessed a sharp intensification of agrarian difficulties and an increasing reponsiveness of the land revenue administration to political pressures. By the beginning of the century the net cultivated area reached almost its maximum extent of some 35 to 36 million acres.

  • 1 - North India

  • from IX - Agrarian Relations and Land Revenue
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 235-249

  • Summary

    This chapter surveys agrarian relations in Mughal India, with an examination of the nature and magnitude of 'land revenue' (māl, kharāj), since it accounted for the larger part of the agricultural surplus of the country. Under Akbar, the ɀabt system, which simplified the process of assessment very greatly, though much depended on the accuracy with which the standard cash rates were fixed for each locality, practically covered the entire region from the Indus to the Ghaghra. With the land revenue accounting for the bulk of the surplus agricultural produce, the assignment of the larger portion of the empire in jāgīrdārs meant placing in the hands of a numerically very small class control over much of the GNP of the country. The role assigned to the zamīndārs in the Mughal revenue system tended to blur the barriers. The zamīndārs often claimed to derive their right from settling a villag.

  • XII - The Monetary System and Prices

  • from PART II - c. 1500–1750
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 360-381

  • Summary

    Until the reign of Sher Shah, the principal coin in circulation in northern India was the billon sikandari, a copper coin with a small silver alloy, which had developed out of the progressive debasement of the silver tanka of the Delhi sultans. While the rupee became the principal coin for commercial transactions and tax payments, the Mughals issued a gold coin, muhr of 169 grains troy. The prices of foodgrains may theoretically be the best index of the movement of the general price-level, because of the fact that in a mainly agrarian economy, these determine to a large extent the costs and prices of all commodities. In the experience of modern capitalist economies, the doubling of prices during the first sixty years of the seventeenth century and again the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, would hardly merit the designation of inflation. The income of the ruling class came from collection of taxes, mainly the land revenue.

  • 2 - Agrarian Economy

  • from III - Northern India under the Sultanate
  • Edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri, Irfan Habib
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of India
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1982, pp 48-76

  • Summary

    Agriculture was carried on by peasants living in villages. The first ruler credited with digging canals for promoting agriculture was the immigrant 'Qarauna' sultan, Ghiyasuddin Tughluq. It was under Flruz Tughluq in the period 1351-86 that the biggest network of canals known in India until the nineteenth century was created. The peasants of the Delhi sultanate cultivated a very large number of crops. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the introduction of sericulture, or the breeding of the mulberry silkworm for producing true silk. In the western Panjab, which had seen two centuries of Ghaznavid rule, the Islamic taxation system was in operation. Barani introduces a new relationship in medieval economy: the relationship between land revenue and agricultural production. The iqtā's were the main instrument for transferring agrarian surplus to the ruling class and its soldiery. Another form of transfer of revenue claims existed, which went largely to maintain the religious intelligentsia and other dependants of the ruling class.