Development and Capitalism

Reviews the literature and major questions on the end of serfdom and rural economic development in pre-modern England. The period from the Black Death to the later seventeenth century was one of major transitions in Europe. The Netherlands, then England and Britain, overtook Spanish and Italian states for economic dominance in Europe, leading to the Great Divergence as Europe overtook Asia. In England, these centuries saw the end of serfdom and open field, and communal agriculture, with a new emphasis on individual and agrarian capitalism. The northeast was prospering, with capitalist farmers supplying the region and the expanding coal trade in Newcastle, although not at the scale of London with its exports of the new draperies and its growing population leading to agrarian development in southern England. This demonstrates an alternative to the traditional models of agrarian and economic development and indicates the importance of regional growth in supporting the national economy.