The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600 Historical Materialism Book Series Editorial Board Sébastien Budgen (Paris) Steve Edwards (London) Marcel van der Linden (Amsterdam) Peter Thomas (London) VOLUME 74 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hm The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600 By Spencer Dimmock LEIDEN | BOSTON Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dimmock, Spencer.  The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600 / by Spencer Dimmock.   pages cm. — (Historical materialism book series ; volume 74)  Includes bibliographical references.  ISBN 978-90-04-27109-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27110-4 (e-book) 1. Capitalism— England—History—15th century. 2. Capitalism—England—History—16th century. I. Title.  HC254.4.D56 2014  330.942’05—dc23 2014011154 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1570-1522 isbn 978 90 04 27109 8 (hardback) isbn 978 90 04 27110 4 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Introduction  1 part 1 A Defence of Robert Brenner  9 1 Robert Brenner’s Thesis on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism  11 i Ahistorical Perspectives  11 ii Historical Materialism and Social-Property Relations  16 iii Medieval and Early Modern Europe in Comparative Perspective  25 2 The Prime Mover of Economic and Social Development  34 i J. Hatcher and M. Bailey: The Case for Pluralism I  34 ii S.R. Rigby: The Case for Pluralism II  42 iii S.R. Epstein: State Formation and Market Integration  48 iv H.R. French and R.W. Hoyle: Market Determinism  61 3 Feudalism, Serfdom and Extra-Economic Surplus Extraction  65 4 Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism  73 i B.M.S. Campbell: The English Peasantry and the Feudal Crisis  76 ii A Critique of Campbell: English Lordship and the Feudal Crisis  79 5 Insecure Property and the Origin of Capitalism  88 i Tenurial Security Versus Tenurial Insecurity  88 ii Leasehold and Copyhold: The Trump Card of English Lordship?  92 iii The Level of State Protection for Peasant Property  95 iv Rising Entry Fines on Copyholds  101 6 The Rise of Capitalist Yeomen and a Capitalist Aristocracy  105 i The Origin of Capitalism in the Shell of Commercial Landlords’ Estate System  105 ii The Rise of the Yeomen  108 vi contents iii Lords and Yeomen: A Relationship of Mutual Interests?  117 iv Lords, Yeomen, and the ‘English Rising’ of 1549  120 7 Periodising the Origin of Capitalism in England  128 i The Significance of Medieval Economic Expansion c. 1100–1300  128 ii The Early Modern Transition  132 iii The Origin of Capitalism in the Long Fifteenth Century  140 iv Resistance and Periodising the Origin of Capitalism  153 8 Orthodox Marxism versus Political Marxism  157 i The Theoretical Foundations and Project of Orthodox Marxism  158 ii Feudal Social-Property Relations  172 iii The Causes of Diverging Outcomes of Class Struggles in Europe  178 iv The Origin of Capitalism and Bourgeois Revolution: From Above or Below?  180 v Peasants, Markets and the Role of English Towns  195 vi The Origin of Capitalism: England or Europe?  205 part 2 Economic and Social Transformations in Kent: A Case Study  233 9 Economy and Society in Late Medieval Lydd and its Region  237 i Demographic Change and its Causes  238 ii Communications and Trading Networks  246 iii Social and Occupational Structures in the Fifteenth Century  250 iv Politics and Government  259 v The Crown and the Cinque Ports  264 vi The Government of Lydd  266 vii Romney Marsh Institutions and Infrastructure  268 10 Engrossment, Enclosure and Resistance in the Fifteenth Century  272 i Conflict in the 1440s: The Vicar, the Jurat and All Souls College  274 ii Conflict in the 1460s and Beyond: Battle Abbey and its Farmers  278 contents vii 11 An Emerging Capitalist Social-Property Structure  301 i Commercial Landlords and Capitalist Tenant Farmers  301 ii Contrasting Mentalities in the 1520s: Capitalist and Non-Capitalist  311 iii Proletarianisation and Dependence in the Sixteenth Century  319 12 Engrossment, Enclosure and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century  331 i Legal Resistance to Engrossment and Enclosure  332 ii Illegal Resistance to Engrossment and Enclosure  340 iii Postscript: Developments in the Seventeenth Century  346 13 Legitimising Social Transformation: The Festival of St. George  350 Conclusion  363 Appendix  368 References  382 Index  395 Introduction If capitalism is defined as an economic system in which businesses produce to sell on the market either domestically or overseas, then capitalism has always existed if in less efficient forms. If this definition is accepted, both the pre-history and the history of capitalism would amount to the history of com- merce and commercialisation – that is, the recounting of increasing efficien- cies in production and exchange through technological innovation, related changes in the organisation of production and distribution, and the geograph- ical expansion or globalisation of trade. The question therefore of capitalist origins, the subject of this book, would be beside the point.1 This book begins with the premise that rather than simply an economic system, capitalism is a specific historical form of social system or society with its own specific economic logic, fundamentally distinct from earlier historical forms of society – and indeed from non-capitalist societies in different parts of the world today. This is because, like all other historical forms of society, capitalism has a unique structure of class relations, and it is this structure which determines its specific economic system and therefore specific pat- terns of economic development. In other words, it is the struggle to make a living by opposed interests within the established structure of class relations that determines the nature of economic development (or non-development). Capitalism and other historical forms of society are therefore necessarily defined in political terms. For example, capitalism is the only form of society in history in which the majority of people and their families are entirely depen- dent on others for waged employment in order to survive. It is in that depen- dency, and the consequent imbalances in power in the work-place, that there lurks the political relationship. This contrasts with other non-capitalist forms of society, such as feudalism and absolutism in medieval and early modern Europe and Asia, in which the majority of people and families held land, were largely self-subsistent in food that they produced themselves, and had there- fore to be coerced by more directly political means by lords, monarchs and emperors into paying various forms of rent and taxation. And it contrasts with slavery in ancient and early medieval Europe, and New World societies such as North America between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, in which large sections of the population were neither wholly self-subsistent nor free to seek waged employment, but coerced by political means into forming part of the constant capital of their masters’ production process and bought and sold 1 For example, a recent self-styled ‘definitive’ history of capitalism traces the ‘rise of capitalism’ from ancient Babylon and the first known traders: Neal and Williamson, 2014. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�7��04_��� 2 introduction like other investments.2 It follows therefore that any historical account of eco- nomic growth, development and transformation will have to firmly integrate these fundamental political relationships at the centre of the analysis. This book is about how the capitalist form developed out of the feudal form in England. It is about how the majority of people in England came to no lon- ger work the land for a living, having done so for thousands of years, and were forced instead to seek employment either from farmers or in industry and ser- vice; in other words, how the lives of the majority of people changed from sub- sistence farming in which they had a permanent means of supplying at least their basic needs, to one in which they were dependent on others for employ- ment in order to supply those needs. A fundamentally similar process is going on today elsewhere in the world, the most obvious example of which is China. Millions of people are being rapidly uprooted from their subsistence plots and communities in the countryside, and are migrating to the vast new cities that are being built in preparation for them. The Chinese Communist Party that is directing these changes had a blueprint of already existing capitalism which it has applied, but there was of course no such blueprint for the English; these fundamental changes in England were the unintentional result of pragmatic adaptations implemented blindly. This book is comprised of both an intervention in a long-standing debate and the presentation of original research on the origin of capitalism in England. England is particularly significant in this debate because while forms of capital- ist production developed in the medieval urban centres of Italy and Flanders, and it is arguable that capitalist social-property relations developed in the northern Netherlands from the fifteenth century, England was the first country in which a transition from feudalism to capitalism was sustained from the fif- teenth century through to modern industrialisation in the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries. As such England’s capitalist origins have often been treated as a model with which to compare and understand origins and transitions to capitalism in other countries, past and present. In fact, England’s transition to capitalism appears in stark contrast to the rest of Europe in the medieval and early modern periods, including those countries such as Italy, Germany, France and parts of the Low Countries which were more advanced in terms of trade and urbanisation in the medieval period and beyond. These countries only underwent a transition to capitalism after fully-fledged agrarian capital- ism had already developed in England and it was d eveloping its Industrial 2 See Post 2011 for a brilliant recent discussion on the fundamental characteristics of slavery and the obstacle it posed to capitalist expansion in North America in the mid-nineteenth century.