England in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: An Economic Contrast?
England in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: An Economic Contrast?
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十二世纪和十三世纪的英国：经济对比？
DOI：
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发表时间：
1971
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Edward V. Miller
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文献类型：
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作者：
Edward V. Miller
关于中世纪英国经济发展进程的DEAS，其中许多长期以来被确立为或多或少没有受到挑战的假设，在过去的一代人中已经经历了剧烈的修改。Prof. M. M.特别是波斯坦，他不断地削弱了那些以在不断扩大的交换和货币经济的兴起的影响下，庄园制度的渐进和单线性转变为中心的观点。中世纪的现实已经被证明比旧观念所假设的要复杂得多。在中世纪，就像在其他时代一样，由于天气和收成的变幻莫测、政治条件和其他环境的影响，也会出现短期的经济波动（尽管繁荣曲线上的许多小涟漪，特别是它们在地区上的表现，仍有待详细绘制）。然而，还有一种观点认为，这些“周期性振荡”是叠加在经济活动的长期涨落之上的。[2]在这种联系中，有人提出，12世纪的基本经济趋势与13世纪的明显经济趋势之间存在着基本的对比，这种对比对于整个英国中世纪的新经济年表来说可能是至关重要的。如果仅仅是因为这个原因，而且还因为它涉及到一个奇怪的自相矛盾的12世纪的观点，这是一个需要检验的假设。[3]
DEAS about the course of economic development in medieval England, many of them long established as more or less unchallenged assumptions, have been subjected to drastic revision during the past generation. Prof. M. M. Postan, in particular, has steadily undermined those views which centred upon a progressive and unilinear transformation of a manorial regime under the impact of expanding exchanges and the rise of a money economy. Medieval realities have been shown to be infinitely more complex than the older notions assumed. In the Middle Ages, as at other times, there were short-range economic fluctuations responding to the vagaries of weather and harvests, to political conditions, and to other circumstances (although many of these minor ripples on the curve of prosperity, especially in their regional manifestations, have still to be charted in detail). It is a further argument, however, that these "recurrent oscillations" were superimposed upon much longer-range ebbs and flows of economic activity.2 In this connexion it has been suggested that there is a basic contrast between the underlying economic trend in the twelfth century and that discernible in the thirteenth, a contrast which may well be crucial for the new economic chronology of the English Middle Ages as a whole. If only for that reason, and also because it involves a view of the twelfth century which is curiously paradoxical, this is a hypothesis which needs to be tested.3