Medieval Crisis Research Articles

The “heaviest rains that man had ever seen or heard of:” interpreting a weather event in late medieval Portugal

ABSTRACT The fifteenth-century royal chronicler Fernão Lopes describes a weather event on 24 October 1384 in which the future King João I of Portugal (1385–1433) failed to attack a strategic castle because of a tremendous storm that caused the army to lose its way in the dark and rendered the roads and river crossings impassable. The city of Lisbon flooded and there was considerable damage to buildings. The description of the storm and its aftermath is by far the longest description of weather for medieval Portugal. The aim here is to set this storm within the context of the late medieval crisis, placing it alongside the warfare, plague, papal schism, siege and hunger also described by Lopes, and exploring it in relation to research on late medieval climate change. Lopes’s chronicles are major sources for crisis in medieval Portugal, but this storm has not previously been considered within that context.

Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates

Although variations in building activity are a useful indicator of societal well-being and demographic development, historical datasets for larger regions and longer periods are still rare. Here, we present 54,045 annually precise dendrochronological felling dates from historical construction timber from across most of Europe between 1250 and 1699 CE to infer variations in building activity. We use geostatistical techniques to compare spatiotemporal dynamics in past European building activity against independent demographic, economic, social and climatic data. We show that the felling dates capture major geographical patterns of demographic trends, especially in regions with dense data coverage. A particularly strong negative association is found between grain prices and the number of felling dates. In addition, a significant positive association is found between the number of felling dates and mining activity. These strong associations, with well-known macro-economic indicators from pre-industrial Europe, corroborate the use of felling dates as an independent source for exploring large-scale fluctuations of societal well-being and demographic development. Three prominent examples are the building boom in the Hanseatic League region of northeastern Germany during the 13th century, the onset of the Late Medieval Crisis in much of Europec. 1300, and the cessation of building activity in large parts of central Europe during armed conflicts such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648 CE). Despite new insights gained from our European-wide felling date inventory, further studies are needed to investigate changes in construction activity of high versus low status buildings, and of urban versus rural buildings, and to compare those results with a variety of historical documentary sources and natural proxy archives.

Framing Mediterranean Famine: Food Crisis in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona

The study of famine has long been a part of the broader historical literature on late medieval crisis, but until recently the anglophone literature on this subject has tended to focus on the experience of northern Europe. The present article examines two famine cycles in the city of Barcelona: one in the 1330s, the other in the 1370s. Using sources ranging from chronicles to municipal ordinances to royal correspondence, this article analyzes these famine cycles within three distinct frameworks: a Europe-wide approach focusing on the effects of late medieval climate change, a regional approach that situates these famines within the fourteenth-century conflicts that disrupted Mediterranean trade networks, and a local approach that considers how the city’s distinct responses to each of these famines reflected important shifts in the urban context of Barcelona over the course of the fourteenth century. By juxtaposing all three approaches in an exploration of one city’s experience of fourteenth-century crisis, this article realizes two interrelated goals: to bring the experience of Mediterranean Europe into the broader conversation about late medieval famine, and to offer a case study of how employing various combinations of structure and contingency can nuance our conclusions about historical famine more generally.

The Historical Archaeology of the Medieval Crisis in Scandinavia

In the wake of the Black Death in i 1350 Europe saw demographic disaster, economic decline, and social and political breakdown. Thousands of farms were deserted. This is the Medieval Agrarian Crisis. The latest decadesof outland archaeology, primarily within the frames of rescue archaeology, have made it possible to outline the course of the crisis in the forested parts of middle Scandinavia. The 14th and 15th centuries were a time of economic change rather than economic decline. However, various areas changed in different ways. When taking outland production into account the medieval crisis has to be conceptualised in another way; it was not solely an agrarian crisis. It was also early industrial expansion and change towards extensive farming.

Els mercaders catalans i la cultura de l’Edat Mitjana al Renaixement

L'étude des marchands du Moyen-Age a souvent souffert des déformations dues à l'image qu'on leur attribuait d'agents économiques pré-capitalistes dont le comportement était inspiré par des valeurs culturelles bourgeoises. En se basant sur une définition plus rigoureuse de ce groupe social, cet article prend comme exemple la Barcelone médiévale et tente de développer une hypothèse concernant l'évolution des marchands à travers la crise de la fin du Moyen-Age et du début de la Renaissance. Il cherche à établir un rapport entre les modèles dominants de la mobilité sociale avec l'identité politique d'une cité médiévale et la culture carac­téristique des marchands. De cette manière l'article établit un modèle dynamique dans lequel le rôle social d'un marchand-entrepreneur ouvert aux risques est com­paré à un modèle d'avancement social tel celui d'un rentier noble et finalement aristocrate. Ce processus est interprété a la lumière de l'évolution de la Couronne d 'Aragon et à travers la dernière crise de l'époque médiévale et celle des siècles suivants, et souligne, d'une part la précarité de Barcelone en tant que centre éco­nomique, et d'autre part l'échec politique d'un modèle de coopération entre une monarchie féodale et des marchands autonomes forme caractéristique pendant cette période d'expansion. C’est, dans ce contexte, à travers l'analyse de l'inventaire de leur bibliothèque que l'évolution de ces marchands de Barcelone a été étudiée. Il faut souligner le remarquable niveau de lecture qui existait à la fin du quator­zième siècle et au quinzième. L'univers moral de ces marchands peut se caractéri­ser par la combinaison d'une piété chrétienne alliée à une sorte d'attitude utilita­riste, qui semble avoir été orchestré par l'argumentation cléricale d'auteurs influents tels que Francesc Eiximenis. Avec la décadence politique des marchands en tant que groupe social et dans le contexte du milieu de la Renaissance, il y a eu toutefois une confirmation de la tendance à la médiocrité culturelle.

El forment a la Barcelona baixmedieval: preus, mesures i fiscalitat (1283-1345)

À travers l’analyse de deux types de livres de comptes barcelonais, très différents l'un de l'autre, l'un émanant de la gestion des moulins royaux et l'autre d'une institution ecclésiastique, celle de Pia Almoina, nous avons pu faire une approche de l'érude du marché de froment à Barcelone pendant le bas Moyen-Age. Tour d'abord nous avons analysé la valeur des mesures utilisées à Barcelona, et, afin de pouvoir évaleur le coût du pain, nous avons réalisé une étude des prix des différents procédés industriels qui permettaient de transformer le froment en pain; nous y avons ajouté l’ensemble des impôts qui grevaient la commercialisation des céréales. A travers l'étude de l'evolution des prix nous avons tenté de réaliser une première approche du comportement du marché barcelonais des céréales au début de la crise qui s'est déclarée pendant le bas Moyen-Age, plus spécialement entre les années 1283 et 1345, opposant ce travail à ceux réalisés à partir de sources qui ne tenaient pas compte des notions de quantité. Pour terminer, nous avons comparé notre étude avec celles réalisées pour la Couronne d' Aragon et la région méditerranéenne, de manière à obtenir une approche toujours plus précise de la chronologie des différen­tes crises de subsistance.

El El viaje al Purgatorio de Ramon de Perellós.

Este artículo ofrece un análisis panorámico de las transformaciones simbólicas y mentales que acontecen a finales de la Edad Media. El viaje al Purgatorio de san Patricio actúa como núcleo vertebrador debido a las implicaciones, efectos y usos de los que es objeto. Ramon de Perellós fue uno de los sujetos que lo emplearon, poniendo en evidencia la génesis de una nueva forma de vida acorde con una cosmovisión transformada a lo largo de la crisis bajomedieval.

Farm establishment, abandonment and agricultural practices during the last 1,300 years: a case study from southern Sweden based on pollen records and the LOVE model

The aim of the study was to identify changes in agricultural practices and periods of agricultural expansion and regression during the last 1,300 years in the South-Swedish Uplands. Sediments from the small lake of Skarpingsgolen (1.2 ha) were used to quantify land-cover at a local scale (c. 1 km radius) in 50-year intervals based on pollen analysis and the LOVE model (Local Vegetation Estimates). The results showed a dramatic change in land-cover, starting c. ad 1150, from a grazed, deciduous woodland, dominated by Corylus, Betula and Quercus, to a semi-open landscape dominated by Picea and open agricultural land. A hamlet, situated next to the lake, was probably established during the 12th century, abandoned during the late medieval crisis (late 14th century) and re-colonized during the 16th century. High values of Cannabis-type pollen (up to 10% of the pollen sum) suggest that hemp retting was carried out in the lake from the 13th to the 17th centuries, while elevated levels of microscopic charcoal indicate that slash-and-burn cultivation was practiced during the early 14th and the 16th–18th centuries. The LRA-based estimates of vegetation show that the modern landscape, dominated by managed coniferous woodlands, is very different from the landscape only 50–100 years ago. This type of study is useful for comparisons with historical and archaeological records, and provides sufficient temporal and spatial resolution to identify short-lived abandonments and shifts in agricultural practices.

Despoblamiento e identidades locales en la Baja Edad Media. Microhistorias y tendencias a través de la arqueología de los despoblados de Álava (País Vasco)

This paper analyses, from an archaeological perspective, the social history of late medieval rural landscapes taking into consideration settlement transformation and abandons. This line of research has a long tradition in all Europe connected to the study of the so-called late medieval crisis. However, in the last few decades this topic has been neglected due to the re-evaluation of the real impact of demographic variations and even the reconsideration of the crisis notion itself. But new archaeological projects carried out in medieval villages in Iberia have allowed to reassess this topic from new perspectives. In this paper changes in local community identities and desertions processes are analysed in the light of settlement patterns transformation observed in Alava (Basque Country, Spain) during the 13th and 15th centuries from a microhistory perspective.

Catholicism and Cosmopolitanism: the Confluence of Three Catholic Scholars and the Cosmopolitan Democrats on State Sovereignty and the Future of Global Governance

One of the central questions in international relations today is how we should conceive of state sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty—’supreme authority within a territory’, as Daniel Philpott defines it—emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 as a result of which the late medieval crisis of pluralism was settled. But recent changes in the international order, such as technological advances that have spurred globalization and the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, have cast the notion of sovereignty into an unclear light. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate regarding sovereignty by exploring two schools of thought on the matter: first, three Catholic scholars from the past century—Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray, S.J.—taken as representative of Catholic tradition; second, a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. The paper argues that there is a confluence between the Catholic thinkers and the cosmopolitan democrats regarding their understanding of state sovereignty and that, taken together, the two schools have much to contribute not only to our current understanding of sovereignty, but also to the future of global governance.

The Medieval Climate Anomaly and Byzantium: A review of the evidence on climatic fluctuations, economic performance and societal change

At the beginning of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, in the ninth and tenth century, the medieval eastern Roman empire, more usually known as Byzantium, was recovering from its early medieval crisis and experiencing favourable climatic conditions for the agricultural and demographic growth. Although in the Balkans and Anatolia such favourable climate conditions were prevalent during the eleventh century, parts of the imperial territories were facing significant challenges as a result of external political/military pressure. The apogee of medieval Byzantine socio-economic development, around AD 1150, coincides with a period of adverse climatic conditions for its economy, so it becomes obvious that the winter dryness and high climate variability at this time did not hinder Byzantine society and economy from achieving that level of expansion. Soon after this peak, towards the end of the twelfth century, the populations of the Byzantine world were experiencing unusual climatic conditions with marked dryness and cooler phases. The weakened Byzantine socio-political system must have contributed to the events leading to the fall of Constantinople in AD 1204 and the sack of the city. The final collapse of the Byzantine political control over western Anatolia took place half century later, thus contemporaneous with the strong cooling effect after a tropical volcanic eruption in AD 1257.We suggest that, regardless of a range of other influential factors, climate change was also an important contributing factor to the socio-economic changes that took place in Byzantium during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Crucially, therefore, while the relatively sophisticated and complex Byzantine society was certainly influenced by climatic conditions, and while it nevertheless displayed a significant degree of resilience, external pressures as well as tensions within the Byzantine society more broadly contributed to an increasing vulnerability in respect of climate impacts.Our interdisciplinary analysis is based on all available sources of information on the climate and society of Byzantium, that is textual (documentary), archaeological, environmental, climate and climate model-based evidence about the nature and extent of climate variability in the eastern Mediterranean. The key challenge was, therefore, to assess the relative influence to be ascribed to climate variability and change on the one hand, and on the other to the anthropogenic factors in the evolution of Byzantine state and society (such as invasions, changes in international or regional market demand and patterns of production and consumption, etc.). The focus of this interdisciplinary study was to address the possible causal relationships between climatic and socio-economic change and to assess the resilience of the Byzantine socio-economic system in the context of climate change impacts.

Calculating the Middle Ages? The Project »Complexities and Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean and Near East« (COMMED)

The project "Complexities and networks in the Medieval Mediterranean and Near East" (COMMED) at the Division for Byzantine Research of the Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences focuses on the adaptation and development of concepts and tools of network theory and complexity sciences for the analysis of societies, polities and regions in the medieval world in a comparative perspective. Key elements of its methodological and technological toolkit are applied, for instance, in the new project "Mapping medieval conflicts: a digital approach towards political dynamics in the pre-modern period" (MEDCON), which analyses political networks and conflict among power elites across medieval Europe with five case studies from the 12th to 15th century. For one of these case studies on 14th century Byzantium, the explanatory value of this approach is presented in greater detail. The presented results are integrated in a wider comparison of five late medieval polities across Afro-Eurasia (Byzantium, China, England, Hungary and Mamluk Egypt) against the background of the {\guillemotright}Late Medieval Crisis{\guillemotleft} and its political and environmental turmoil. Finally, further perspectives of COMMED are outlined.

Lake Belau and its catchment (northern Germany): A key archive of environmental history in northern central Europe since the onset of agriculture

The environmental history since the onset of agriculture was reconstructed from sediments and soils in the catchment area of Lake Belau (Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany). The established chronologies are based on varve counts, radiocarbon data, embedded Icelandic tephra (lake sediments), radiocarbon dates, and embedded artifacts (slope deposits). Neolithic land use triggered small-scale erosion. Lake trophic indicators and pollen data clearly reflect the onset of agriculture and the middle Neolithic expansion of agricultural activity. Despite numerous archaeological findings, less intensive field use and no soil erosion occurred during the older and younger Bronze Age. Perhaps, animal husbandry was more important than cereal cultivation. Between 2000 and 500 cal. bc, Aeolian input from a distant source can be observed. During the late Bronze Age and Pre-Roman Iron Age, intensified field use enabled severe soil erosion (gullies c. 200 cal. bc). The degradation of soils started in this period, influenced by excessive land use, climatic variability, and/or the reduction in Aeolian deposition. The Roman Iron Age and Migration Period were phases of reduced human impact and soil formation. During medieval times, the intensity of field use increased again and another phase of soil erosion (gully in the 14th century, probably reflecting the ‘Magdalenenflut’ 1342) and soil degradation started. After the late medieval crisis caused by the ‘black death’ and several armed conflicts, another increase in soil erosion may reflect the rearrangement of estates (18th−19th century) and introduction of industrial agriculture (20th century). A recurrence of high-intensity erosion events is indicated at c. 1540, 1710, and probably 1939 ad. Whereas the lake trophic status is influenced by human impact on the lake catchment, wetter and warmer climatic phases are reflected in increased carbonate precipitation modulated by solar activity, human impact, and the long-term evolution of vegetation and soils in the lake catchment.

Ecological Approaches in Medieval Rural Archaeology

In recent years, scientific methods of bio- and geoarchaeology have become increasingly important for archaeological research. Political changes since the 1990s have reshaped the archaeological community. At the same time environmental topics have gained importance in modern society, but the debate lacks an historical understanding. Regarding medieval rural archaeology, we need to ask how this influences our archaeological research on medieval settlements, and how ecological approaches fit into the self-concept of medieval archaeology as a primarily historical discipline. Based mainly on a background in German medieval archaeology, this article calls attention to more complex ecological research questions. Medieval village formation and the late medieval crisis are taken as examples to sketch some hypotheses and research questions. The perspective of a village ecosystem helps bring together economic aspects, human ecology and environmental history. There are several implications for archaeological theory as well as for archaeological practice. Traditional approaches from landscape archaeology are insufficient to understand the changes within village ecosystems. We need to consider social aspects and subjective recognition of the environment by past humans as a crucial part of human–nature interaction. Use of the perspective of village ecosystems as a theoretical background offers a way to examine individual historical case studies with close attention to human agency. Thinking in terms of human ecology and environmental history raises awareness of some interrelations that are crucial to understanding past societies and cultural change.

Medieval Colanization and Abandonment in the South Swedish Uplands: a Review of Settlement and Land Use Dynamics Inferred from the Pollen Record

In this review of pollen data from the South Swedish uplands, evidence is presented of colonisation and strong agricultural expansion during the 11th to 13th centuries, followed by farm abandonment and land use change during the 14th to 15th centuries. The latter is associated with the Black Death and the late medieval crisis. Pollen data show that abandonment in the uplands resulted in the regrowth of woodland, but also in land use change from cereal growing to grazing. Similar cycles of agricultural expansion and decline are identified also from earlier periods during the Iron Age, which highlights the sensitive character of upland agriculture and settlement.

Vegetation and settlement history of the past 9000 years as recorded by lake deposits from Großer Eutiner See (Northern Germany)

Pollen analyses of a 24m long sediment core from Großer Eutiner See, a lake located in the lakeland area of the young moraine landscape of Ostholstein, Northern Germany, reveals over 9000years of vegetation and settlement history. The record is time controlled by 12AMS 14C dates of terrestrial plant remains. First human impact is evident already in the late Mesolithic between 5120 and 4900BC (7070–6850cal. yr BP). Simultaneously with the elm decline at about 3940BC (5890cal. yr BP), first agricultural activity is registered in the early Neolithic. The strongest Neolithic opening of the landscape occurred during the Single Grave culture at around 2450BC (4400calyr BP). The early Bronze Age (3770–3060cal. yr BP) is characterized by low settlement activity. During the late Bronze Age large scale expansion of arable farming and pasture land is documented from c. 990 to 490BC (2940–2440cal. yr BP). Between 350BC and AD 170 (2300–1780cal. yr BP), massive increase of heather indicates advanced deterioration of soils by continuous exploitation during the pre-Roman and to a somewhat lesser extent during the late Roman Iron Age. About AD 530 to 670 (1420–1280cal. yr BP) a distinctive settlement gap occurred, followed by three phases of intensive Slavic settlement until AD 1140 (810cal. yr BP). In the further course of the Middle Ages areas under cultivation increased strongly at the expanse of woodland. At this time new crops were introduced like hemp, buckwheat and walnut. The area of Großer Eutiner See largely remains untouched by the late medieval crisis in the 14th century. Forest degeneration continued during the Modern Period. During the 18th and 19th centuries agricultural impact reached its maximum. A gradual recovery of the forest is observed only in the recent decades.

The Theological Origins of Modernity (review)

Reviewed by: The Theological Origins of Modernity Michael Lackey Michael Allen Gillespie. The Theological Origins of Modernity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. xiii + 386 pp. Dauntingly ambitious and consistently insightful, The Theological Origins of Modernity is to date the most informed study to convincingly demonstrate that secularization is an overstated fiction, which has significantly distorted our understanding of intellectual and political history. In stark contrast to Steve Bruce’s God is Dead: Secularization in the West (2002), Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007), and Theodore Ziolkowski’s Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief (2007), which claim that secularization is either well underway or an established fact in the contemporary West, Gillespie’s book is in the tradition of Vincent P. Pecora’s Secularization and Cultural Criticism: Religion, Nation, & Modernity (2006), Tracy Fessenden’s Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (2007), and Pericles Lewis’s Religious Experience in the Modernist Novel: God’s Afterlife (forthcoming, 2010), which demonstrate that what we witness in the West is not so much “the erasure or disappearance of God but the transference of his attributes, essential powers, and capacities to other entities or realms of being” (274). What makes Gillespie’s book relevant and groundbreaking is not so much his major claim as it is the nuanced and complicated journey he takes to arrive at his conclusion. Gillespie begins the journey by tracing the theological origins of modernity back to a medieval crisis in Christianity between scholasticism, which reifies universals as the incarnation of divine reason, and nominalism, which provisionalizes the universal as it prioritizes the particular. According to Gillespie, it was ultimately [End Page 463] nominalism that shaped European thought by calling being into question and thereby producing “a new ontology, a new logic, and a new conception of man, God, and nature” (16). This triad of man, God, and nature turns out to be decisive, for Gillespie defines humanism, the Reformation, and modernity in relation to each one. Humanism prioritizes man and thus interprets God and nature on the basis of man, while the Reformation prioritizes God and thus interprets man and nature on the basis of God. Given their radically different approaches, humanists and reformers waged intense battles. Gillespie reads these battles in relation to Pelagianism, a “heretical” doctrine that holds that humans have not been irreparably damaged by original sin. Hence, humans can behave as moral agents without divine assistance, so they are primarily responsible for their own salvation and Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross is not the basis for redemption. Pelagianism had a polarizing effect. In the tradition of Pelagius, many Christian humanists developed philosophies that limited divine power and underscored human freedom and moral responsibility as the way to the divine. In opposition to Pelagius, many Christian reformers developed theologies that extended divine power and underscored human servitude as the road to the divine. Modernity sought to sidestep the conflicts between humanists and reformers by prioritizing nature. However, and this is where Gillespie is at his scholarly best, modernity neither overcame nor resolved the earlier conflicts about God and man but merely concealed them within its metaphysics. To clarify and justify his approach, Gillespie reads Kant’s third antinomy, which foregrounds the contradiction between the mechanical laws of natural necessity and the insistent claim to human freedom, as one of the most unresolved dilemmas haunting western philosophy. Kant prioritizes the mechanistic view of nature “as a self-evident truth of reason” (276). As an offshoot of this nature-first approach, Kant believed transcendental idealism solved the conflict between mechanical necessity and human freedom “by differentiating the phenomenal realm of nature and necessity from the noumenal realm of freedom and morality” (277). However, if modernity has understood “the world not as a product of a Promethean freedom or of a radically omnipotent divine will but of the mechanical motion of matter” (262), this certainly did not eliminate the crucial questions about the contradiction between mechanical necessity and human freedom that are central to Kant’s third antinomy. What Kant did was merely to conceal or ignore rather than resolve the conflicts between humanists and reformists by prioritizing nature as the axiomatic...

De laatmiddeleeuwse crisis van de overheidsfinanciën en de financiële revolutie in Holland

The Late Medieval Crisis of Government Finance and the Financial Revolution in HollandHistorians of the Dutch Revolt have suggested that the success of the rebellious provinces can be explained by sixteenth-century financial innovations that improved the creditworthiness of the States of Holland. This article claims that this development was triggered by a severe crisis of public finance in these States at the end of the fifteenth century. An analysis of the ensuing reorganization shows that some of these innovations were first introduced as a means of crisis management. This article uncovers some of the elements that allowed the States to create provincial debt on a more structural basis after 1515, during Holland’s ‘financial revolution’.

Las casas-torre bajomedievales. Análisis sistémico de un proceso de reestructuración espacial/territorial

La torre banderiza es uno de los más relevantes elementos del patrimonio construido vasco. Diseminados por toda la geografía de la comunidad autónoma, se pueden encontrar ejemplos representativos de este tipo arquitectónico, característico de una convulsa etapa que se prolongó algo más allá del período de crisis bajomedieval (siglos XIV-XVI). Este trabajo pretende por un lado formular una propuesta interpretativa sistémica e integradora que, partiendo del análisis estratigráfico de las fábricas, muestre el peso específico de esta construcción como elemento de gestión de los recursos del territorio. Pero sobre todo, en las siguientes líneas se hace una decidida apuesta por una forma de entender la investigación histórico-arqueológica.

The German Peasants' War and the "Crisis of Feudalism." Reflections On a Neglected Theme

AbstractThe view that the Peasants' War stemmed from a "crisis of feudalism" has been principally advanced by Peter Blickle. His dominant interpretation of the War fuses the late medieval economic crisis and the struggle for territorial consolidation by means of a revived serfdom into a general crisis of feudalism. But this argument underplays the profound changes already underway in the social and economic structure of the main areas of revolt—the commercialization of agrarian production, the spread of rural crafts, the fragmentation of holdings, the penetration of urban capital through the putting-out system, and the mortgaging of lordships. The consequence was a triangular pattern of conflict, in which landlords and landless laborers, for instance, might combine against possessing peasants, or where rural craftsmen might be encouraged to undercut the urban guilds. The character of the War, therefore, was more a conflict over the appropriation of resources and the seizure of new economic opportunities than it was a "crisis of feudalism," a term which European comparison reveals to be highly problematic.