Peasants Merchants & Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England. This item is unavailable.Peasants Merchants & Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England

A study of the development of regional networks of trade and social interaction over two centuries. Masschaele examines how the expansion of commercial activity, whose focus was the markets, wrought dynamic changes in relations between towns and their rural hinterlands, and helped to erode the localism of medieval society. The book looks at urban merchants and peasant producers and traders, the commodities they exchanged and the markets and transportation networks they used to engage in trade. The final chapter is a case study of Huntingdonshire and its environs, which looks in detail at the workings of a regional economy. Masschaele concludes that by the end of the thirteenth century England had developed a sophisticated commercial economy, which had irreversible effects on all levels of society.