Busy Tenants. The Land Market North and South the Alps in Late Medieval Times

In recent years, research in medieval and early modern European economic history has increasingly concentrated on the analysis of commercialization and the integration of product and factor markets. The results challenge traditional Malthusian-Ricardian theories based upon the lack of social and economic dynamics in pre-industrial European societies. According to commercialization theories, market integration fostered economic growth as well as social and institutional change. Against this backdrop, recent research has focused particularly on the late medieval establishment of rural land markets in Western Europe. Drawing from the new theoretical and methodological stimuli, this project aims to provide a Central European case study on late medieval land market development by means of a comparative approach between selected Austrian and Northern Italian rural regions. It will analyze (i) the institutional framework of rural land markets, (ii) patterns of transfer of tenant land and thus the establishment of land markets for tenant land and (iii) the resulting social change in late medieval rural societies (c. 1400-1550). The comparison will build upon a uniform analysis of two Austrian regions of traditional mixed agriculture and livestock-based mountain farming and an Italian region of grain cultivation and viticulture. The base of primary sources consists of seigniorial land transfer registers and charters as well as cross-sectional sources with information on rural social structure, tenant economic activities and on the land property and equipment held by tenant households. We shall also use sources on legal structures such as custumals and regulations. The studies will concentrate on a quantitative assessment of land transfer registers, which will yield results on the frequency and types of transfers and information on the individuals involved. Detailed information occasionally included in the transfer contracts will provide the basis for an additional qualitative analysis and an assessment of the influence of formal and informal institutions on the behaviour of tenant households in terms of land market activities. Moreover, scarce evidence of property inventories (such as in cases of debt litigations or inheritance regulations for under-age children) and tax records will allow scope for some tentative conclusions on factor endowment and prices. This combined quantitative and qualitative approach will culminate in an analysis at household and family level and will be an attempt to recreate the actors` centred approach which characterizes the work of the project. The comparative approach between selected Austrian and Northern Italian regions will yield the economic, social and institutional factors which prove relevant, condusive or obstructive for the development of flexible land markets. The results will improve our understanding of the late medieval and early modern European land market by illustrating commonly shared patterns and regional differences.

In European economic history of the pre-modern era, the integration of rural product and factor markets has become a focus of research. Market integration is regarded as a characteristic feature of the spread of commercialization, which, together with other institutional chances, may have fueled economic growth even in periods of slower technological change. In this context, it has become the increasing occupation of rural and agrarian historians to analyze patterns of transfers of tenant land in terms of the formation of the land market as part of rural factor markets, based upon the assumption that the rise and integration of tenant land markets changed the land market at large. So far, historical research on Central Europe, as opposed to other European regions, has concentrated on the early modern period of followed theoretical assumptions which have come under harsh criticism in recent years. However, new studies indicate that villagers trading land along with the existence of market transactions with tenant land may not only have existed in the Later Middle Ages, but may have been of importance with regard to regional economic and socio- structural developments. To assess the significance of the rural land market in medieval times, more work is needed, with respect to empirical case studies set in a comparative perspective in addition to existing research efforts for other regions in Europe. This is what we have done in our project in four case studies. Johannes Kaska studied the extensive register of issued deeds recorded by the Upper Austrian monastery Lambach in the mid-15th century. Samuel Nussbaum discussed the 15th and 16th century wine growing villages near Vienna by looking terriers and account books of the monastery of Klosterneuburg. Birgit Heinzle dedicated her attention to the somewhat remote mountainous region in Upper Styria and estates management by the monastery of St. Lambrecht (Styria). Thomas Franks study was focused on the tenants of the hospital Santa Maria dei Battuti in Treviso. Despite the varying legal and social frameworks of these case studies we discovered many comparable phenomena: Transaction practices and forms of possession varied within the normative boundaries. Commercial activity were carried our both within the family and outside the family and, thus, and contradicted the separation of family and market. Ecclesiastical and secular administrations were established to control the variety of contracts and economic performances. In general, we discovered intensive urban and rural investments in suburban and rural areas, protocapitalistic structures and growing inequality, and altering legal frames as a stabilizing and driving force for the land market. Our main result, also from a comparative perspective, certainly is the observation that also in central Europe north and south the Alps there were many busy tenants at work using the landed property or assets for economic bargaining.