•The renowned historian Chris Wickham, in his 2021 article “How Did the Feudal Economy Work? The Economic Logic of Medieval Societies” published in the journal Past & Present, examines how medieval economies functioned, the critical role of peasants in this development, and why centuries of economic growth did not automatically lead to capitalism. Wickham is known to have recently passed away.
This peasant-landowner relationship was, according to Wickham, a defining feature of feudalism. He uses the term in a very economic sense, rather than in the political relationships between kings, nobles, and vassals that it is usually associated with.
Wickham places great importance on northern and central Italy, one of the most economically developed regions in medieval Europe. From the late 12th century onwards, cities such as Milan, Genoa, Venice and Florence experienced significant commercial and industrial expansion. These industries were based on extensive trading networks. Italian merchants imported wool from Castile and England, after North Africa, and cotton from Sicily and the eastern Mediterranean, while wheat was brought to the northern Italian cities, whose growing populations could no longer be fed solely by the surrounding countryside. Banking and credit also expanded; Italian financial institutions eventually lent money to rulers across Europe.
This did not mean that medieval rural society was peaceful or equal. Landowners could impose new burdens with difficulty; Wickham gives examples from France, Italy, and Spain, where the expanding landowning authority increased the burdens on rural communities. The development of more restrictive forms of slavery in parts of Eastern Europe also showed how landowners could strengthen their control over agricultural labour. However, these changes required permanent intervention. Under more ordinary conditions, peasants continued to be directly involved in production, while landowners were often further removed from daily organisation.
When these peasants took advantage of commercial opportunities, their lands could become more secure, reducing their vulnerability to losing their property and becoming dependent on wage labour. Thus, commercial growth did not necessarily lead to capitalism. When trade contracted, peasants could often revert to producing more for their own consumption. This flexibility allowed medieval economic systems to survive periods of growth and decline without fundamentally altering their structure. Wickham points to the eventual transformation of rural England as an important example of this, but stresses that the precise causes of the Industrial Revolution lie beyond the scope of his article.
Wickham further developed these arguments in his 2023 book, The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950–1180. Published by Oxford University Press, the book provides a comprehensive comparison of the economies of Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, Byzantium, Islamic Spain, and northern and central Italy. Based largely on archaeological and written evidence, Wickham argues that regional economic development—including the purchasing power of peasants—was more important than long-distance trade alone, and that Mediterranean prosperity alone did not determine economic development.
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