Christopher Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages

Dyer, Christopher. Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850-1520. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Print.

Dyer's monograph is an engaging consideration of the economic history of medieval England, taking into consideration the period from 850-1520. This is quite a long range, and an ambitious project, but Dyer handles the material well with close and careful consideration of not only a wide range of primary materials but multiple perspectives of the economic situation of the various parts of this period. In fact, considering multiple voices in shaping his reading of the period is key to Dyer's larger goal to counter previously held historical grand narratives. One such narrative holds that in the latter half of the fourteenth century, due to the reduced population following the plague, workers experienced greater demand, increased wages, and more competitive markets for their labor. Dyer highlights examples of such experiences, but also carefully identifies several instances where this does not seem to be the case. Wages, for examples, remained relatively stagnant in the fourteenth century according to manorial records, possibly due to the labor statutes' threats for both laborer and employer. Even here, however, Dyer considers the possibility that, due to fear of enforcement of those statutes, manorial records may not have entirely represented the wages actually being paid to laborers. In this manner, Dyer's text pushes the idea that, rather than establishing larger historical models to apply to medieval England, the period itself defies such models due to the high variation among regions, local governments, and individuals. 

My particular interests lie with Dyer's chapter that covers 1350-1520, especially those involving the economy and trade. While much of what Dyer discusses mirrors other scholars' work I've recently read, he does bring up a few points that especially interest me. In discussing the attempts by laborers in London to form fraternal organizations, Dyer follows similar points as those made by Diana Wood in regards to the attempts by local guilds, merchants, and organizations to prevent any action by the unskilled workers to protest their working conditions and wages (316). The moves to do so seem to run in a rather similar veins to modern discussions of labor unions, and adds another dimension to my consideration of labor in this period. Furthermore, Dyer points to the role of individual choice as vital to the economic growth, where growth occurs, in this period. Success, according to Dyer, was more dependent on the individual's ability to adjust to shifting market conditions than anything else. Those merchants and laborers who smoothly shifted from agrarian labor to embrace the cloth trade performed quite will in the fourteenth century, while those slow to change suffered more. Even at a city-wide level, locations such as London that dove into support for the cloth trade did quite well, while other ports less able to adjust to the widespread issues of the period floundered. Rather than considering a large model to generalize what occurred in this period, Dyers' text demonstrates that understanding the individuals is key to understanding the period.