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The middle Byzantine economy: growth or stagnation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Alan Harvey
Alan Harvey*
Affiliation:
Department of Historical and Critical Studies, University of Northumbria at Newcastle
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Extract

In recent years there have been significant advances in our understanding of the Byzantine rural economy. While work on such problems as the legal status of the peasantry, the fiscal procedures by which the state extracted revenues from the peasantry and the nature of the fiscal concessions which the state made to landowners remains central to our understanding of the Byzantine social structure, greater attention has been paid recently to the history of settlements, agricultural production and the influence of the climate and environment on the rural economy. Recent work has been greatly facilitated by two developments, the publication of more material from the archives of Mount Athos and the upsurge in intensive surveys and other archaeological work which is already providing us with information about regions for which our documentary material is either inadequate or non-existant. This paper will not attempt a comprehensive discussion of all recent work on the subject, but will focus on some of the most significant problems affecting our understanding of the Byzantine rural economy.

Type
Critical Study
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 19 , 1995 , pp. 243 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1995

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References

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