Bruce M S Campbell
Biographic Data
| ID | 972337 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bruce M S Campbell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bruce M S |
| FAMILY NAME | Campbell |
| SIGNATURE | CAMPBELL B M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University Belfast |
| ORCID | 0009-0003-2108-4979 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 213 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
From Boom to Bust
Economic developments within Ireland from the opening of the second millennium to the early fourteenth century are discussed within the context of the European commercial revolution, which, across the same period, promoted exchange at all levels before succumbing to a prolonged and deepening recession. The reversal of trends from expansion to contraction began earlier and was more pronounced in Ireland than in Europe's core commercial regions, pa…
British business cycles, 1270–1870
Annual estimates of GDP constructed from the output side are used to analyse British business cycles between 1270 and 1870. After c.1670, the scale of recessions tended to diminish as the economy grew, diversified and became more resilient. Until c.1730, business cycles were driven largely by agricultural fluctuations, but shocks to industry and commerce became more important over time as the structure of the economy changed. A number of severe r…
Field Systems and Farming Systems in Late Medieval England
Commonfield Agriculture
Commonfield agriculture is one of the most distinctive and intriguing manifestations of common-property resource management. The precise nature of these arrangements depended upon environmental, technological, demographic, and sociopolitical circumstances, which is why England, for example, contained so many different types of commonfield systems. Environmentally, too, there was a vast difference in the circumstances under which these two commonf…
Church building and the economy during Europe’s ‘Age of the Cathedrals’, 700–1500 CE
Global Climates, the 1257 Mega-Eruption of Samalas Volcano, Indonesia, and the English Food Crisis of 1258
In 1258, as baronial opposition to Henry III erupted and the government became locked in constitutional conflict, the country found itself in the grip of a serious food crisis. To blame was a run of bad weather and failed harvests. Thousands of famished famine refugees flocked to London in quest of food and charity, where many of them perished and were buried in mass graves. The multiple burials recently discovered and excavated in the cemetery o…
Clark's Malthus delusion
Clark's claims about the scale of English agricultural output from the 1200s to the 1860s flout historical and geographical reality. His income‐based estimates start with the daily real wages of adult males and assume that days worked per year were constant. Those advanced in British economic growth make no such assumption and instead are built up from the output side. They correlate better with population trends and are consistent with an econom…
The Great Transition
In the fourteenth century the Old World witnessed a series of profound and abrupt changes in the trajectory of long-established historical trends. Transcontinental networks of exchange fractured and an era of economic contraction and demographic decline dawned from which Latin Christendom would not begin to emerge until its voyages of discovery at the end of the fifteenth century. In a major new study of this 'Great Transition', Bruce Campbell as…
Expelling the Plague
Expelling the Plague: The Health Office and the Implementation of Quarantine in Dubrovnik, 1377–1533. Zlata Blažina Tomić and Vesna Blažina. McGill-Queen’s/Associated Medical Services Studies in the History of Medicine, Health, and Society 43. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. xxii + 362 pp. $39.95. - Volume 69 Issue 2
An Environmental History of Medieval Europe, by Richard C. Hoffmann
Journal Article An Environmental History of Medieval Europe, by Richard C. Hoffmann Get access An Environmental History of Medieval Europe , by Richard C. Hoffmann ( Cambridge : Cambridge U.P. , 2014 ; pp. 409 . £18.99 ). Bruce M.S. Campbell Bruce M.S. Campbell The Queen’s University of Belfast Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 130, Issue 547, December 2015, Pages 1537–1…
Mark Bailey. The Decline of Serfdom in Late Medieval England
Serfdom last topped the historical agenda in the early 1980s, when the Marxist-inspired “Brenner Debate” was at its most heated and the 600th anniversary of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt prompted a flurry of publications on the subject. Since then, as empirical knowledge about servile status, villein tenures, and feudal lordship has steadily accumulated, and as historians have demonstrated the capacity of custom to curb this triad of institutions' mo…
When did Britain industrialise? The sectoral distribution of the labour force and labour productivity in Britain, 1381–1851
Harvest Shortfalls, Grain Prices, and Famines in Preindustrial England
The frequency of bad harvests and price elasticity of demand are measured using new data on English grain yields 1268-1480 and 1750-1850 and a revised price series. The analysis shows that major harvest shortfalls were a significant component of most historical subsistence crises, as back-to-back shortfalls were of the worst famines. Although serious harvest shortfalls long remained an unavoidable fact of economic life, by c.1800 yields had becom…
Mapping the Realm
The mid‐fourteenth century map of Britain known as the ‘Gough’ map is the earliest extant depiction of the island in geographically recognizable form. Hitherto, however, interest in the road or route patterns marked on the map has meant that the map's extraordinarily rich settlement geography has not received the attention it merits and that, consequently, the point of the map may have been missed. The availability of a digital scan of the map co…
Factor markets in England before the Black Death
Modern English factor markets originated during the two centuries of active commercialization that preceded the Black Death. An active labour market was established by the late twelfth century. Evolution of a land market followed the legal reforms of the 1170s and 1180s, which created legally secure and defensible property rights in land. These rights stimulated growth of a capital market, since land became a security against which credit could b…
Nature as historical protagonist
This article compares chronologies reconstructed from historical records of prices, wages, grain harvests, and population with corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climatic variations derived from dendrochronology and Greenland ice‐cores. It demonstrates that in pre‐industrial, and especially late medieval, England, short‐term environmental shocks and more enduring shifts in environmental conditions (sometimes acting in concert wi…
Benchmarking medieval economic development
Estimates are assembled for England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and for Britain and Ireland as a whole, of the numbers of religious houses, regular clergy, parishes, towns of more than 2,000 inhabitants, and townspeople, and the value of dutiable exports and volume of currency at the watershed date ofc.1290. Absolute and relative levels of economic development are then compared. A range of possible population estimates are considered and corre…
A frontier landscape
The Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century
For most of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries England’s economy, along with that of much of the rest of Europe, expanded and grew.1 From the mid thirteenth century, however, the economic tide began to turn, and by the 1290s it is clear that prosperity was waning fast.2 The circumstances, timing, pace and scale of the recession naturally varied a great deal from region to region, but the net outcome was the same almost everywhere: by the …
English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450
Bruce Campbell's book, first published in 2000, was the first single-authored treatment of medieval English agriculture at a national scale. It deals comprehensively with the cultivation carried out by or for lords on their demesne farms, for which the documentation is more detailed and abundant than for any other agricultural group either during the medieval period or later. A context is thereby assured for all future work on the medieval and ea…
Matching Supply to Demand
Manorial accounts allow detailed investigation of the market involvement of medieval seignorial demesnes. Production decisions taken locally emerge as strongly, if indirectly, influenced by the market. Disposal decisions, in contrast, were much more a matter of estate policy and therefore of institutional factors. Probably because of differential transaction costs, many lords preferred to provision their households directly from their estates rat…
Production et productivité dans l’agriculture anglaise, 1086-1871
Ce texte envisage les différentes mesures possibles de la production agricole et de la productivité, et de là présente de nouvelles estimations du chiffre de population, de l'utilisation du sol, du produit céréalier, de la productivité de la terre et du travail pour l'Angleterre depuis le XIe siècle jusqu'au XIXe siècle. Il réexamine certaines questions générales à l'aide des sources susceptibles de produire ces estimations et explore cinq points…
Land, Labour and Livestock
Productivity change in European agricultural development, Mark Overton and Bruce Campbell improving soil productivity in the pre-fertilizer era, Robert Shiel agricultural productivity in the pre-documentary past, Martin Jones agrarian productivity on the estates of the Bishopric of Winchester in the early 13th century - a managerial perspective, Kathleen Biddick labour productivity in medieval agriculture - Tuscany and the Low Countries, Gunnar P…
A Medieval Capital and Its Grain Supply
A Commercialising Economy
Commercialization and economic development in England, 1000-1300, R.H. Britnell the dynamic role of the market in the Anglo-Norman economy and beyond, 1086-1300, Graeme Donald Snooks modelling medieval monetization Nicholas Mayhew Jewish lending and the medieval English economy, Robert C. Stacey disposing of a surplus, or producing for the market? some reflections on woodland and pasture sales on the Winchester manors in the 13th century, David L…
Nature as historical protagonist
This article compares chronologies reconstructed from historical records of prices, wages, grain harvests, and population with corresponding chronologies of growing conditions and climatic variations derived from dendrochronology and Greenland ice‐cores. It demonstrates that in pre‐industrial, and especially late medieval, England, short‐term environmental shocks and more enduring shifts in environmental conditions (sometimes acting in concert wi…
The Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century
For most of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries England’s economy, along with that of much of the rest of Europe, expanded and grew.1 From the mid thirteenth century, however, the economic tide began to turn, and by the 1290s it is clear that prosperity was waning fast.2 The circumstances, timing, pace and scale of the recession naturally varied a great deal from region to region, but the net outcome was the same almost everywhere: by the …
Benchmarking medieval economic development
Estimates are assembled for England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and for Britain and Ireland as a whole, of the numbers of religious houses, regular clergy, parishes, towns of more than 2,000 inhabitants, and townspeople, and the value of dutiable exports and volume of currency at the watershed date ofc.1290. Absolute and relative levels of economic development are then compared. A range of possible population estimates are considered and corre…
When did Britain industrialise? The sectoral distribution of the labour force and labour productivity in Britain, 1381–1851
Agricultural Progress in Medieval England
Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English agriculture is currently X held in low repute. According to M. M. Postan “the inertia of medieval agricultural technology is unmistakable” 1 with the result that an agricultural system persisted in which the arable and pastoral sectors were competitive rather than complementary. As J. Z. Titow has observed, “a chronic state of under-manuring . . . would go a long way towards explaining the low level of p…
A New Perspective on Medieval and Early Modern Agriculture
Bruce M. S. Campbell, Mark Overton; A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN AGRICULTURE: SIX CENTURIES OF NORFOLK FARMING c. 1250-c. 1850*, Past & P
Harvest Shortfalls, Grain Prices, and Famines in Preindustrial England
The frequency of bad harvests and price elasticity of demand are measured using new data on English grain yields 1268-1480 and 1750-1850 and a revised price series. The analysis shows that major harvest shortfalls were a significant component of most historical subsistence crises, as back-to-back shortfalls were of the worst famines. Although serious harvest shortfalls long remained an unavoidable fact of economic life, by c.1800 yields had becom…
Land, Labour and Livestock
Productivity change in European agricultural development, Mark Overton and Bruce Campbell improving soil productivity in the pre-fertilizer era, Robert Shiel agricultural productivity in the pre-documentary past, Martin Jones agrarian productivity on the estates of the Bishopric of Winchester in the early 13th century - a managerial perspective, Kathleen Biddick labour productivity in medieval agriculture - Tuscany and the Low Countries, Gunnar P…
Factor markets in England before the Black Death
Modern English factor markets originated during the two centuries of active commercialization that preceded the Black Death. An active labour market was established by the late twelfth century. Evolution of a land market followed the legal reforms of the 1170s and 1180s, which created legally secure and defensible property rights in land. These rights stimulated growth of a capital market, since land became a security against which credit could b…
Church building and the economy during Europe’s ‘Age of the Cathedrals’, 700–1500 CE
Land, Labour and Livestock
Arable Productivity in Medieval England
Statistics on crop yields for the period 1268–1430 from 62 demesnes in the eastern half of Norfolk are used to demonstrate a new method of measuring arable productivity. The method takes into account seeding rates, the frequency of cropping, and the relative importance of the different crops grown, and it acknowledges the existence of different farming regions. Within eastern Norfolk two such regions are shown to have existed, which cut right acr…
Norfolk livestock farming 1250–1740
The population of early tudor England
Population Change and the Genesis of Commonfields on a Norfolk Manor
IN the Middle Ages eastern Norfolk possessed a social structure which was unusually flexible and free. The institution of lordship appears to have been retarded by the area's comparatively late settlement (a substantial settled population not being attracted until the late ninth century) and by a strong freeDanish element in the population;2 so much so that as late as io86 over half of the population was of free or socage status.3 As was usual, s…
Clark's Malthus delusion
Clark's claims about the scale of English agricultural output from the 1200s to the 1860s flout historical and geographical reality. His income‐based estimates start with the daily real wages of adult males and assume that days worked per year were constant. Those advanced in British economic growth make no such assumption and instead are built up from the output side. They correlate better with population trends and are consistent with an econom…
Cluster Analysis and the Classification of Medieval Demesne-Farming Systems
John P. Power, Bruce M. S. Campbell, Cluster Analysis and the Classification of Medieval Demesne-Farming Systems, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1992), pp. 227-245
Mapping the Realm
The mid‐fourteenth century map of Britain known as the ‘Gough’ map is the earliest extant depiction of the island in geographically recognizable form. Hitherto, however, interest in the road or route patterns marked on the map has meant that the map's extraordinarily rich settlement geography has not received the attention it merits and that, consequently, the point of the map may have been missed. The availability of a digital scan of the map co…
Mapping the agricultural geography of medieval England
The diffusion of vetches in medieval England
productive arable farming systems could and did evolve during the course of the thirteenth century.3 On a larger geographical scale Langdon has shown that from the mid-twelfth century an increased usage of the horse began to have a significant impact upon traction and haulage.4 Substitution of the horse for the ox in ploughing made particular progress on peasant holdings and allowed an intensification of arable production, the development of more…
Fourth Anglo-American Seminar on the Medieval Economy and Society, Leicester, July 1992
A bibliography of Norfolk history
Norfolk and suffolk surnames in the middle ages
The community of the vill
Population Change and the Genesis of Commonfields on a Norfolk Manor
IN the Middle Ages eastern Norfolk possessed a social structure which was unusually flexible and free. The institution of lordship appears to have been retarded by the area's comparatively late settlement (a substantial settled population not being attracted until the late ninth century) and by a strong freeDanish element in the population;2 so much so that as late as io86 over half of the population was of free or socage status.3 As was usual, s…
The population of early tudor England
The English medieval landscape
Arable Productivity in Medieval England
Statistics on crop yields for the period 1268–1430 from 62 demesnes in the eastern half of Norfolk are used to demonstrate a new method of measuring arable productivity. The method takes into account seeding rates, the frequency of cropping, and the relative importance of the different crops grown, and it acknowledges the existence of different farming regions. Within eastern Norfolk two such regions are shown to have existed, which cut right acr…
Agricultural Progress in Medieval England
Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English agriculture is currently X held in low repute. According to M. M. Postan “the inertia of medieval agricultural technology is unmistakable” 1 with the result that an agricultural system persisted in which the arable and pastoral sectors were competitive rather than complementary. As J. Z. Titow has observed, “a chronic state of under-manuring . . . would go a long way towards explaining the low level of p…
The diffusion of vetches in medieval England
productive arable farming systems could and did evolve during the course of the thirteenth century.3 On a larger geographical scale Langdon has shown that from the mid-twelfth century an increased usage of the horse began to have a significant impact upon traction and haulage.4 Substitution of the horse for the ox in ploughing made particular progress on peasant holdings and allowed an intensification of arable production, the development of more…
Mapping the agricultural geography of medieval England
People and Land in the Middle Ages, 1066–1500
The Other Economy
Fourth Anglo-American Seminar on the Medieval Economy and Society, Leicester, July 1992
Norfolk livestock farming 1250–1740
Cluster Analysis and the Classification of Medieval Demesne-Farming Systems
John P. Power, Bruce M. S. Campbell, Cluster Analysis and the Classification of Medieval Demesne-Farming Systems, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1992), pp. 227-245
Land, Labour and Livestock
A New Perspective on Medieval and Early Modern Agriculture
Bruce M. S. Campbell, Mark Overton; A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN AGRICULTURE: SIX CENTURIES OF NORFOLK FARMING c. 1250-c. 1850*, Past & P
The Common Fields of England
The characteristics of English common fields the origins of common fields field-courses field and fold town government common field and severality common fields overseas
Household Accounts from Medieval England, I
A Medieval Capital and Its Grain Supply
A Commercialising Economy
Commercialization and economic development in England, 1000-1300, R.H. Britnell the dynamic role of the market in the Anglo-Norman economy and beyond, 1086-1300, Graeme Donald Snooks modelling medieval monetization Nicholas Mayhew Jewish lending and the medieval English economy, Robert C. Stacey disposing of a surplus, or producing for the market? some reflections on woodland and pasture sales on the Winchester manors in the 13th century, David L…
A Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink
Production et productivité dans l’agriculture anglaise, 1086-1871
Ce texte envisage les différentes mesures possibles de la production agricole et de la productivité, et de là présente de nouvelles estimations du chiffre de population, de l'utilisation du sol, du produit céréalier, de la productivité de la terre et du travail pour l'Angleterre depuis le XIe siècle jusqu'au XIXe siècle. Il réexamine certaines questions générales à l'aide des sources susceptibles de produire ces estimations et explore cinq points…
Land, Labour and Livestock
Productivity change in European agricultural development, Mark Overton and Bruce Campbell improving soil productivity in the pre-fertilizer era, Robert Shiel agricultural productivity in the pre-documentary past, Martin Jones agrarian productivity on the estates of the Bishopric of Winchester in the early 13th century - a managerial perspective, Kathleen Biddick labour productivity in medieval agriculture - Tuscany and the Low Countries, Gunnar P…
Matching Supply to Demand
Manorial accounts allow detailed investigation of the market involvement of medieval seignorial demesnes. Production decisions taken locally emerge as strongly, if indirectly, influenced by the market. Disposal decisions, in contrast, were much more a matter of estate policy and therefore of institutional factors. Probably because of differential transaction costs, many lords preferred to provision their households directly from their estates rat…
Geography (26 works) · Archaeology (25 works) · History (24 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (22 works) · Economics (21 works) · Medieval Literature and History (19 works) · Agriculture (18 works) · History (12 works) · Agricultural economics (11 works) · Political science (10 works)