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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2025

        Serfdom in medieval England

        Theory and practice 1200 to 1500

        by Mark Bailey

        Serfdom was a coercive relationship between a landowner and peasant, which was widespread across medieval and early modern Europe. Itfeatures prominently in major historical debates, such as the origins of capitalism and the divergent pathways of western and eastern Europe to modernity. Scholars have paid particular attention to English serfdom, which is usually portrayed as highly oppressive and a major cause of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. This comprehensive survey draws on a vast scholarship and new research to show how, in reality, English serfdom was weak, casting new light on the nature of its society and economy when the Black Death struck in 1348-9. The pandemicnow assumesa central role in the rapid decline of serfdom, as illustrated in a case study of the estate of one of England's harshest landowners, St Albans abbey.

      • Trusted Partner
        June 2024

        At the Very Bottom of the System

        How migrant workers ensure prosperity for us

        by Sascha Lübbe

        The author reveals structural problems and offers solutions – an urgently necessary book, not least with a view to the acute shortage of skilled workers 450,000 migrant workers toll on German construction sites, work in sometimes inhumane conditions in meat factories or as truck drivers, and let’s not forget the hordes of cleaners in German hotels and companies. They are systematically exploited and cheated out of their wages. Sascha Lübbe exposes the octopus-like network of partly criminal companies in a shadowy world where the boundary between the legal and the illegal is blurred. In his evocative book with interviews with those aff ected, he reveals how a parallel system has established itself in the German working world, but also how those affected resist.

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