Oh, dear. I got the exact opposite impression about Tuchman's mirror
when I read that book. I thought the 1300s were a time of coming
out of a stagnant social order into the modern age, with a kick from
the black death.
What happened with the famines and epidemics was that Europe's
It is a long time since I read Tuchman. I have her on my shelves and should
look again. However, in general, the 14th Century brought a close to a warm
spell that lasted some four centuries and in which, in Europe, population
grew and agriculture was greatly expanded, many great cathedrals
I am wondering how many people within range of this have read
Jared Diamond's Collapse; how civilizations choose to succeed or
fail. There are plenty of examples of how societies chose to
survive. Usually it was by eliminating class structures and going
to a peasant, egalitarian
