ABSTRACT
Recent gains in empirical research made by social historians have tended to outrun ability to fit them into a comprehensive conceptual scheme: but some have been willing to look up from their parishes and commit themselves to a more general account of social development. Macfarlane concludes by suggesting that the origins of English ‘individualism’ –both in the sense of individualistic social organization and distinctiveness from other societies – may lie as far back as the first Germanic settlements in England. According to Macfarlane, in the model Eastern European peasant society the household is the main ‘unit of ownership’, and property law therefore assumes a highly distinctive form. A further basic similarity between medieval and modern English society, to Macfarlane, is that land and labor markets existed in the later Middle Ages. The new models that Macfarlane challenges the reader to build must, unlike his, represent the distribution of social power and the mental world of the past.
