ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some views and assumptions commonly held about the economic development of agriculture in the central and later Middle Ages. These views and assumptions, whether explicit or implicit, will be shown to touch upon some broader issues of social relationships in the countryside. Land husbandry was the principal means of livelihood directly providing the major part of consumption needs. There was a frequent need for credit, met outside the scope of homestead and community. For both the grain-producing holdings in the lowlands and the stock-raising Alpine Schwaigen, provision by the lords of the means of production was the key to the very functioning of the peasant economy. Despite its overriding importance for such basic issues as levels of production and economic growth, the nature of investment, capital formation and capital goods in medieval agriculture has received surprisingly little attention.
