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AbstractThe replacement of rents in kind by payments in money is considered by many historians as a marker of the commercialization of the economy and thus of its modernization. The case of medieval Normandy does not confirm this development, however: the sources testify to a common use of money since the end of the eleventh century, but also to the persistence until the fifteenth century of payment in kind, including in the field of credit. The article examines the case of the Caen region, for which there is abundant evidence from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of annuities purchased with money from peasants in exchange for annual repayments in grain. This system allowed a significant transfer of monetary value to the countryside, while guaranteeing the supply of urban markets and welfare institutions. Although these contracts were usually secured by pledges on plots of land, they did not lead to the expropriation of peasants, but rather promoted the growth of credit markets in the countryside.

International audience ; Le concept de révolution industrieuse forgé par les historiens du Japon permet de poser de façon nouvelle la question de l'augmentation de l'offre de travail comme facteur déclenchant du processus de croissance, et de replacer celle-ci dans le contexte politique d'une société d'ordres. Convaincant pour comprendre le processus de croissance dans le monde rural, ce modèle ne permet pas de représenter la dynamique d'urbanisation, qui exige une autre approche, économique et institutionnelle

International audience ; Le concept de révolution industrieuse forgé par les historiens du Japon permet de poser de façon nouvelle la question de l'augmentation de l'offre de travail comme facteur déclenchant du processus de croissance, et de replacer celle-ci dans le contexte politique d'une société d'ordres. Convaincant pour comprendre le processus de croissance dans le monde rural, ce modèle ne permet pas de représenter la dynamique d'urbanisation, qui exige une autre approche, économique et institutionnelle

International audience ; Resource has always been a missing element in medieval economic history. According to the implicitly Malthusian model, which underlies most of the current literature, narrative about growth and crisis does not need a chapter on natural resources: where there is economic and demographic growth there must be resources; when crisis happens, resources must be insufficient. Such an interpretation takes its roots in the theses of Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) and Jean-Baptist Say (1767–1832), two major economists of early industrial times. Instead, in pre-industrial economies environment is not considered an opportunity for individual profit or entrepreneurial purpose: the main issue is legitimate needs and livelihood. Any thorough analysis of medieval economics should start with people's needs and the question of allowing them a means of subsistence, rather than with an assessment of potential benefits. The main challenge for the historian is to find useful evidence. For the Central Middle Ages, Fritz Curschman's book Hungersnöte in Mittelalter (1901) provides a very useful collection of cases, which, for the eleventh and twelfth centuries, casts light on the process of some severe famines, most of them in Flanders and Rhineland cities. The Anglo-Norman realm seems to have suffered less shortage of livelihood than the German regions. The abundance of harvests around the Channel shores is not easy to describe, still less to explain. For England, an enormous amount of literature, about manorial economy and open field husbandry, suggests that royal power and seigniorial institutions, which shaped the agrarian landscape, were the organizers of the allocation of wealth and the arbiters of need. Despite its pervasive influence on English political evolution, Normandy was a very different case. Medieval historiography and charters indicate that local markets were the real centres of the economic and social system. The many settlements of tithes conflicts in the late twelfth century and many more grain ...

International audience ; Resource has always been a missing element in medieval economic history. According to the implicitly Malthusian model, which underlies most of the current literature, narrative about growth and crisis does not need a chapter on natural resources: where there is economic and demographic growth there must be resources; when crisis happens, resources must be insufficient. Such an interpretation takes its roots in the theses of Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) and Jean-Baptist Say (1767–1832), two major economists of early industrial times. Instead, in pre-industrial economies environment is not considered an opportunity for individual profit or entrepreneurial purpose: the main issue is legitimate needs and livelihood. Any thorough analysis of medieval economics should start with people's needs and the question of allowing them a means of subsistence, rather than with an assessment of potential benefits. The main challenge for the historian is to find useful evidence. For the Central Middle Ages, Fritz Curschman's book Hungersnöte in Mittelalter (1901) provides a very useful collection of cases, which, for the eleventh and twelfth centuries, casts light on the process of some severe famines, most of them in Flanders and Rhineland cities. The Anglo-Norman realm seems to have suffered less shortage of livelihood than the German regions. The abundance of harvests around the Channel shores is not easy to describe, still less to explain. For England, an enormous amount of literature, about manorial economy and open field husbandry, suggests that royal power and seigniorial institutions, which shaped the agrarian landscape, were the organizers of the allocation of wealth and the arbiters of need. Despite its pervasive influence on English political evolution, Normandy was a very different case. Medieval historiography and charters indicate that local markets were the real centres of the economic and social system. The many settlements of tithes conflicts in the late twelfth century and many more grain annuity contracts for the thirteenth century provide evidence of a complex system, whose many components all mattered: the nature of the crops (wheat, rye, oats and barley), the social identity of the consumers, the market and credit organization, pricing and assessment of values. This paper argues that any resource system could be very different according to place, but that it was always the core of any social organization.

International audience ; Traditionally, from a global point of view, the European ancient, medieval andearly modern iron-production has been considered backwards by comparison to the more efficient Chinese industry, where the smiths controlled the cast-iron technology from the fourth century AC onwards. Recent publications on Chinese and European cases give the opportunity to reappraise the question. Cast-iron was produced in both areas in the modern times, but not with the same purpose, and in very different productive contexts. A closer analysis of iron consumption in both cases shows that Chinese farmers used cast-irontools, which were produced in large furnaces controlled by the imperial bureaucracy. Such tools did not need any specific craft in the peasant community; animal power was not generally used in agriculture. European ploughmen instead used steel tools locally produced in small iron-works, which needed the skills of a smith to be fixed. Such steel ploughs could support animal traction (by oxen or horses) which made them highly productive, and caused important losses of metal. From a more general point of view, the use of cast-iron or steel has therefore to be considered as a clue for the description of the agrarian system: the human work-intensive Chinese tradition, with its high yields, was either a technologic, economic and social choice, as was the energy intensive European system. For Europe, the change from direct production of steel towards indirect production of cast-iron was a path towards higher productivity of work and technology. Cast-iron was the same chemical material but not the same produce in the Eastern and Western part of Eurasia.

International audience ; Traditionally, from a global point of view, the European ancient, medieval andearly modern iron-production has been considered backwards by comparison to the more efficient Chinese industry, where the smiths controlled the cast-iron technology from the fourth century AC onwards. Recent publications on Chinese and European cases give the opportunity to reappraise the question. Cast-iron was produced in both areas in the modern times, but not with the same purpose, and in very different productive contexts. A closer analysis of iron consumption in both cases shows that Chinese farmers used cast-irontools, which were produced in large furnaces controlled by the imperial bureaucracy. Such tools did not need any specific craft in the peasant community; animal power was not generally used in agriculture. European ploughmen instead used steel tools locally produced in small iron-works, which needed the skills of a smith to be fixed. Such steel ploughs could support animal traction (by oxen or horses) which made them highly productive, and caused important losses of metal. From a more general point of view, the use of cast-iron or steel has therefore to be considered as a clue for the description of the agrarian system: the human work-intensive Chinese tradition, with its high yields, was either a technologic, economic and social choice, as was the energy intensive European system. For Europe, the change from direct production of steel towards indirect production of cast-iron was a path towards higher productivity of work and technology. Cast-iron was the same chemical material but not the same produce in the Eastern and Western part of Eurasia.

International audience ; Traditionally, from a global point of view, the European ancient, medieval andearly modern iron-production has been considered backwards by comparison to the more efficient Chinese industry, where the smiths controlled the cast-iron technology from the fourth century AC onwards. Recent publications on Chinese and European cases give the opportunity to reappraise the question. Cast-iron was produced in both areas in the modern times, but not with the same purpose, and in very different productive contexts. A closer analysis of iron consumption in both cases shows that Chinese farmers used cast-irontools, which were produced in large furnaces controlled by the imperial bureaucracy. Such tools did not need any specific craft in the peasant community; animal power was not generally used in agriculture. European ploughmen instead used steel tools locally produced in small iron-works, which needed the skills of a smith to be fixed. Such steel ploughs could support animal traction (by oxen or horses) which made them highly productive, and caused important losses of metal. From a more general point of view, the use of cast-iron or steel has therefore to be considered as a clue for the description of the agrarian system: the human work-intensive Chinese tradition, with its high yields, was either a technologic, economic and social choice, as was the energy intensive European system. For Europe, the change from direct production of steel towards indirect production of cast-iron was a path towards higher productivity of work and technology. Cast-iron was the same chemical material but not the same produce in the Eastern and Western part of Eurasia.

Résumé L'exemple du secteur métallurgique et minier montre comment le processus technique induit l'apparition de formes nouvelles de production et de commercialisation sous la pression d'une augmentation régulière de la demande. C'est dans ces conditions que le procédé Wallon associant haut fourneau et affinerie s'impose, à l'ensemble de l'Europe du nord-ouest entre 1450 et 1550. La mécanisation de la forge entraîne un changement d'échelle de la production, marquée par une augmentation formidable de la consommation de bois, par la généralisation du salariat et le développement de d'exportation. L'emprise grandissante du maître de forges sur le fondeur et l'affineur se traduit par le développement de l'entreprise sociétaire, mais s'accompagne aussi d'un fort degré d'intervention publique (commandes, exemptions fiscales, protection des brevets, régie).