Great Wave

by Fischer, David Hackett;

  These problematiques are more than merely problems. They are frames of inquiry that include a set of empirical questions, together with the epistemic apparatus necessary to answer them. In short, a problematique is not merely an object of inquiry. It is also a method and even an epistemology.

  How does problematique differ from theory? In terms of grammar, a theory is a declarative statement. A problematique is an interrogative statement. Theory-bound research begins with an assertion; if the theory is sound, that assertion is proven to be correct. Problem-centered research starts with a question; if the problem is sound, then the question can be answered in many different ways according to the evidence. A problematique always has an open end. A theory, by the very nature of its entailed proposition, “if x, then y,” always has a closed end.

  There is also another difference between theory and problematique. A theoretical statement is a universal generalization. It commonly takes the form of an assertion that whenever x exists, then y must always follow. A problematique, on the other hand, can be tailored to historical circumstances.

  Further, in actual practice, a theory-bound research design commonly commits the fallacy of many questions. That is, it asks two or more questions but demands a single answer. A problematique can be more exact, more flexible and also more rigorous. Its rigor is that of erotetic logic, which is the logic of questions and answers, as distinct from the logic of statements. See A. and M. Prior, “Erotetic Logic,” Philosophical Review 64 (1955) 43–59; and Nuel D. Belknap Jr. and Thomas B. Steel Jr., The Logic of Questions and Answers (New Haven, 1976).

  For all of these reasons, the frame of this inquiry has been constructed in terms of a problem rather than a theory. It is organized around a set of interrogative questions rather than declarative statements: What has been the pattern of secular change in price levels? How have price-fluctuations and price-relatives changed through time? How have real wages, rents and interest rates changed?

  To adopt this problem-centered approach is not to deny the possibility of theory-driven inquiry. It is rather to assert the possibility and value of another kind of seeing and knowing. It is to suggest that historians and economists should study their Kipling at an impressionable age, and might be taught to play Kim’s Game. They should not be compelled to choose theory-bound research as the only acceptable form of inquiry. There are other ways.

  NOTES

  Preface

  1. “De tous les appareils enregistreurs, capables de révéler a 1’historian les mouvements profonds de l’economie, les phénomènes monétaires sont sans doute le plus sensible. Mais ne leur reconnaitre que cette valeur de symptôme serait manquer à leur rendre pleine justice; ils ont eté et sont, à leur tour, des causes; quelque chose comme un sismographe qui, non content de signaler les tremblements de terre, parfois les provoquerait.” Marc Bloch, “Le problème de l’or au moyen age,” Annales d’ Histoire Économique et Sociale” 5 (1935) 1.

  2. Daniel J. Boorstin, “Enlarging the Historian’s Vocabulary,” in R. W. Fogel and S. L. Engerman, eds., The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (New York, 1971), xi–xiv.

  3. The author’s favorite price lists for this period appear in Claudio Sanchez-Albornez, Elprecio de la vide en el reino Astor-Leones hace mil años (Buenos Aires, 1945). A copy of this rare and happy work, one of the few price compilations that can be read purely for pleasure, is in the New York Public Library.

  4. See bibliography for a survey of these materials.

  Introduction

  1. “Aufschwung im 13 Jahrhundert . . . Abschwung im Spätmittelalter . . . Aufschwung im 16 Jahrhundert brach im 17 Jahrhundert ab; ein dritter Aufschwung im 18 Jahrhundert . . . Was bedeuten diese Wellen?” Wilhelm Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur: Eine Geschichte der Land und Ernährungswirtschaft Mitteleuropas seit dem höhen Mittelalter (Hamburg and Berlin, 1935, 1956, 1966, 1978), 13–14; an English edition, much revised, has been published as Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (London and New York, 1980).

  2. Ernest Henry Phelps-Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders’ Wage-Rates,” Economica 23 (1956) 296–314; idem, “Seven Centuries of Building Wages, ibid., 22 (1955) 195–206; idem, A Perspective of Wages and Prices (London, 1981). This is a weighted “market-basket” index, which includes grain, vegetables, meat, fish, butter, cheese, drink, fuel, light, and textiles. The weights are held constant throughout the series (80 percent for food; the rest for fuel and textiles), but specific products are changed to match consumption patterns.

  3. Wilhelm Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur; François Simiand, Les fluctuations économiques à longue période et la crise mondiale (Paris, 1932); idem, Recherches anciennes et nouvelles sur le mouvement général des prix du XVIe au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1932); Jenny Griziotti-Kretschmann, ll problema del trend sècolare nelle fluttuazioni dei prèzzi (Pavia, 1935).

  4. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, vol. 3, The Perspective of the World (New York, 1984), 76–80, 82; for the response of American reviewers, see, e.g., Charles Kindleberger in the New York Times. I met the same response in 1980, when I first published an essay summarizing the main lines of my work on this subject. See D. H. Fischer, “Chronic Inflation: The Long View,” Journal of the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies 5 (1980) 81–103. Attitudes at last are changing.

  5. Alan Blinder, New York Times, 19 Feb. 1984.

  6. Lester C. Thurow, The Zero Sum Society (New York, 1980), 43.

  7. Here again waves and cycles behave differently. Academic interest in economic cycles tends to be countercyclical, but the study of waves increases as the wave-crest comes near.

  8. Many cyclical rhythms have been found in modern history. For a survey of a very large literature by social scientists on long cycles—mainly fifty-year Kondratieff cycles or multiples of those units. See Joshua S. Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven, 1988); the literature on this subject is discussed in Appendix E and the bibliography.

  9. See appendix O.

  10. Herbert Stein, Presidential Economics (rev. ed. N.Y., 1985), 222.

  The Medieval Price Revolution

  1. Robert Branner, ed., Chartres Cathedral (New York, 1969), 93.

  2. The deans received rents from stalls in the porch of the cathedral; the canons were given the income from the south cloister. In a charter of May 26, 1224, the canons succeeded in moving the money-changers from the porch to the south cloister: “Each and every one of us, personages as well as canons of Chartres, who had assembled to elect a dean, are agreed that the stalls of the moneychangers, which are customarily in the porch be set up in the cloister to the south, between the steps of the church and the main tower, so that all the dues from the stalls and the house in which they have been set up and the moneychangers themselves might belong to the Chapter, and that they might remain without hindrance, as heretofore, in the possession of the Chapter, in the place where they have been set up this day. . . . Executed in the year of the Lord 1224, the month of May, on the octave of the Lord’s ascension.” Ernest de Lépinois, Cartulaire de Notre Dame de Chartres (n.p., 1862) II, 103; Robert Branner, ed., Chartres Cathedral (New York, 1969), 98–99.

  3. Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1927); G. Pare et al., La renaissance du XIIe siècle: Les écoles et l’enseignement (Paris, 1933); Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1982); R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1953); J. L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500 (London, 1980), 82–179.

  4. This is the estimate of Carl Richard Brühl, Palatium und Civitas: Studien zur Profantopographie spätantiker Civitates von 3. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1975), I, 19. A more conservative reckoning appears in R. W. Southern, “The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres,” in Benson and Cons
table, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, 119.

  5. In the Romagna, Herlihy found that the most common articles of substitute money were books. “At Ravenna,” Herlihy writes, “they dominate exchange throughout the eleventh century.” One wonders what the rate of exchange might have been between authors and fields. “Treasure Hoards in the Italian Economy, 960–1139,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 10 (1957) 4.

  6. Ibid., 5.

  7. William Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1939); also idem, “Wages in Winchester Manors,” Economic History Review 7 (1936–37) 22–43; and idem, “Westminster Wages in the Manorial Era,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 8 (1955–56) 18–35.

  8. The beginning date of the medieval price revolution is one of the more difficult empirical problems in this project, for it antedates most major price series. Some historians believe that prices had been rising as early as the tenth century, after the last of the major barbarian invasions. But a major discontinuity appears in English price movements during the period 1181–1200. Evidence from Exchequer Pipe Rolls and Winchester Pipe Rolls shows a moderate upturn in the price of grain and livestock, followed by a small decline in the period 1190–99, and then a surge in the period 1200–02, which D. L. Farmer describes as a “violent disturbance in the prices of all commodities.” Thereafter the long inflation was clearly underway. See D. L. Farmer, “Prices and Wages,” in Joan Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 717–19, 787–817; idem, “Some Price Fluctuations in Angevin England,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 9 (1956–57) 34–43; idem, “Some Grain Price Movements in Thirteenth-Century England,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 10 (1957–58) 207–20; Norman S. B. Gras, The Evolution of the English Corn Market from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1915), 11–17; and P. D. A. Harvey, “The English Inflation of 1180,” Past & Present 61 (1973) 3–30.

  For France, George Duby finds evidence of “an important qualitative change in the 1180s, and there to fix one of the main turning-points in European economic history”; The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century (Ithaca, 1974), 263.

  In Italy the pattern is less clear; see David Herlihy, “The Agrarian Revolution in Southern France and Italy, 801–1150,” Speculum 33 (1958) 23–41; idem, “The History of the Rural Seignury in Italy, 751–1200,” Agricultural History 33 (1959) 1–14.

  9. M. M. Postan, Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages (London, 1972; Pelican ed., 1975), 257; idem, “Economic Foundations of Medieval Society,” in Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy (Cambridge, 1973), 2–27.

  10. Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, chap. 13.

  11. Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur, 27–41.

  12. In medieval Picardy, Fossier found that in families with children, the number of sons per family increased sharply, circa 1175:

  The annual growth rate accelerated from 0.28 percent in the period 1150–75, to 0.72 percent in 1175–1200. Life expectancy at birth was probably in the range of forty to fifty in this exceptionally healthy era. No reliable record survives of daughters, who were regarded as “trop aléatoire pour être notée.” Robert Fossier, La terre et les hommes en Picardie, jusqu’a la fin du XIIIesiècle (2 vols., Paris and Louvain, 1968), I, 282–92.

  An English study found a similar pattern: a rate of population growth from 1209 to 1311 of 0.85 percent per year—higher than in eighteenth century England, and nearly as high as in some developing nations in the twentieth century. See J. Z. Titow, “Some Evidence of Thirteenth Century Population Increase,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 14 (1961) 220.

  For other research that confirms this pattern, see Duby, Early Growth of the European Economy, 182; Josiah Russell, The Control of Late Ancient and Medieval Population (Philadelphia, 1985), 20; idem, “Recent Advances in Medieval Demography,” Speculum 45 (1965) 84–101; idem, “Aspects démographiques des débuts de la féodalité,” Annales 20 (1965) 1118–27.

  13. This estimate comes from a comparison of manorial surveys in the period 1260–1315, with census data from 1801 to 1951, as reported in H. E. Hallam, “Population Density in Medieval Fenland,” Economic History Review 14 (1961) 71–79; idem, “Some Thirteenth Century Censuses,” ibid., 10 (1957) 340–61; and idem, Rural England, 1066–1348 (Brighton, 1981), 245–50; similar findings are reported in H. P. R. Finberg, Tavistock Abbey (Cambridge, 1951); W. G. Hoskins and H. P. R. Finberg, Devonshire Studies (London, 1952); H. P. R. Finberg, Gloucestershire (London, 1955); W. G. Hoskins, Leicestershire (London, 1957); Edward Miller, The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely (Cambridge, 1951); J. B. Harley, “Population Trends and Agricultural Developments from the Warwickshire Hundred Rolls of 1279,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 11 (1958) 8–18. For similar trends in other parts of Europe, see Enrico Fiume, “Sui rapporti economici tra città e contado nell’età communale,” Archivio Storico Italiano 114 (1956) 18–68; Georges Duby, L’economie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’Occident Médiéval (2 vols., Paris, 1962).

  14. For evidence of falling female age at marriage see David Herlihy, “The Medieval Marriage Market,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1976) 3–27; idem, “The Generation in Medieval History,” Viator 5 (1974) 347–64. Herlihy finds that male age at marriage increased in this period; but the age of the female is critical for changes in fertility levels.

  15. Postan, Medieval Economy and Society; J. Z. Titow, English Rural Society, 1200–1350 (London, 1969). On the problem of population estimates for England, see G. Ohlin, “No Safety in Numbers: Some Pitfalls in Historical Statistics,” in H. Rosovsky, ed., Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gershenkron (New York, 1966), 70–81. See also M. M. Postan, “Some Economic Evidence of Declining Population in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 2 (1950) 221–46; Julian Cornwall, “English Population in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 23 (1970) 32–44; Clyde George Read, “Price Data and European Economic History: England, 1300–1600” (thesis, University of Washington, 1972); Mavis Mate, “High Prices in Early Fourteenth-Century England: Causes and Consequences,” Economic History Review 28 (1975) 1–16.

  16. These estimates were computed by the author from data in James E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England… (7 vols., Oxford, 1866–1902, rpt. Vaduz, 1963), I, 1259–1400.

  17. Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (New York, 1976), 82–84.

  18. Abel, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur, chap. 1.

  19. Median prices in solidi for body armor in medieval Italy were as follows:

  A coif was an iron skullcap or mail hood or both; a hauberk was a long tunic of chain mail; a cuirass was commonly but not invariably a breastplate, and a panceria was the companion piece of a cuirass. These data are taken from William N. Bonds, “Some Industrial Price Movements in Medieval Genoa (1155–1255),” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 7 (1969–70) 123–139; see also Henrietta M. Larson, “The Armor Business in the Middle Ages” Business History Review 14 (1940) 49–64; and C. F. ffoulkes, “European Arms and Armor,” in G. Barraclough, ed., Social Life in Early England (London, 1960), 124–38.

  20. Postan, Medieval Economy and Society, 253–76; idem, “Some Economic Evidence of Declining Population in the Later Middle Ages.” An important study is Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), 101–103.

  Historians refer to disparities between agricultural and industrial prices as a pattern of “price scissors,” which cut one way during the price revolutions, when landlords and money-lenders gained, and laborers and artisans lost. The scissors cut the other way during periods of price equilibrium, when landlords and money-lenders lost, and art
isans and laborers gained from the movement of price relatives.

  Some Marxist scholars believe the “price scissors” to have been peculiar to a feudal economy. Others draw similar conclusions about capitalist economies. This was not the case. The cruelest cuts of all were a variant on price scissors in socialist economies of the twentieth century, as discussed below.

  Further, similar price relatives appeared in the price revolutions of the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries, as we will see. See Guy Bois, Crise dufeodalisme: économie rurale et démographie en Normandie orientale du début du I4e siècle au milieu du 16e siècle (Paris, 1976), 85–88.

  21. Markets of known date were founded as follows in twenty one English counties:

  Markets of unknown date are not included. R. H. Britnell, “The Proliferation of Markets in England, 1200–1349,” Economic History Review 2d ser. 34 (1981) 209–21.

  22. E. M. Carus-Wilson, “An Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century,” Economic History Review 11 (1941) 39–60; Rolf Sprandel, “La production du fer au Moyen Age,” Annales 24 (1969) 305–21.