Demographic collapse paradoxically improved peasant livelihoods while deepening lord-peasant bitterness

Evidence

In the boom condition of the thirteenth century there had been in rural areas a degree of over-population which made many peasants—day labourers, poor serfs-very vulnerable. Now the countryside was more sparsely occupied and a better living was possible for those who remained… . What was new in the slump conditions of the fourteenth century was a bitterness in the lord’s relations with the villagers. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 165

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Enclosure and lord-peasant conflict here prefigures the ‘transition debate’ famously argued by Dobb, Sweezy, and Brenner.

Related

• Labor scarcity after the plague embittered lord-peasant relations rather than easing them (similarity 0.86)
• The plague raised peasant status by making labor scarce and lords poorer (similarity 0.84)
• Fourteenth-century peasant rebellions marked a deeper social crisis than feudal wars (similarity 0.80)