At the Dawn of Modernity: Biology, Culture, and Material Life in Europe after the Year 1000Looking at a neglected period in the social history of modernization, David Levine investigates the centuries that followed the year 1000, when a new kind of society emerged in Europe. New commercial routines, new forms of agriculture, new methods of information technology, and increased population densities all played a role in the prolonged transition away from antiquity and toward modernity. At the Dawn of Modernity highlights both "top-down" and "bottom-up" changes that characterized the social experience of early modernization. In the former category are the Gregorian Reformation, the imposition of feudalism, and the development of centralizing state formations. Of equal importance to Levine's portrait of the emerging social order are the bottom-up demographic relations that structured everyday life, because the making of the modern world, in his view, also began in the decisions made by countless men and women regarding their families and circumstances. Levine ends his story with the cataclysm unleashed by the Black Death in 1348, which brought three centuries of growth to a grim end. |
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At the Dawn of Modernity: Biology, Culture, and Material Life in Europe ... David Levine Limited preview - 2001 |
At the Dawn of Modernity: Biology, Culture, and Material Life in Europe ... David Levine Limited preview - 2001 |
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Agrarian agricultural ancient became Black Death Braudel Cambridge Carolingian castles Cathars Christian Church clerical colonization countryside created crucial cultural demesne demographic domination E. P. Thompson early modernization Economic History English Europe European evidence family formation feudal society forces Fossier fourteenth century France French Georges Duby German Gregorian Reformation growth historians History Review household human inheritance Investiture Crisis Jacques Le Goff king knights labor power labor services land later living London lords lordship Luther male manorial Marc Bloch marriage married mass massive Medieval England Middle Ages mills Montaillou mutation organization Oxford Past and Present peasant peasantry percent plague political popular population production quoted Reformation religious rents reproduction revolution role royal rural secular seigneurial sexual social relations spiritual structure Studies suggests tenants thirteenth century tion transformation urban village villeins violence William Marshal women