Practice question · Multiple choice
The same demographic shock raised peasant wages in western Europe and tightened serfdom east of the Elbe. Why does Brenner argue that a purely demographic model cannot explain this?
Hints
- Ask what a model with only one variable can and cannot explain.
- If scarcity of labour alone determined the outcome, the outcome should have been the same in both regions.
Show the answer
C. One cause cannot produce opposite outcomes without different lord-peasant power.
Why
Postan’s Malthusian model explains the western case elegantly: fewer workers, higher wages. Brenner’s objection is that it should then explain the eastern case too, and it predicts the opposite of what happened. His answer is that demography sets the problem and the existing balance of social power decides how it is resolved.
Practise The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: a Time of Crisis?
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