Introduction

This chapter begins with peasant economy of the sixteenth century and follows agrarian developments in detail through to the later seventeenth when, for the first time, the country was brought into such agricultural surplus that its corn was exported. The basic unit of peasant society was certainly the farming community; but rural economy needs to be studied in a context wider than the individual village. The peasant's increasing personal involvement in marketing was an essential element of the transformation. The peasant's initial entry into the market was, however, as it had been for centuries, through the market place of his own local town. Indeed in any peasant society the primary urban unit is the market town, forming the nucleus of a "local market system". The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.