Books that talk about "crisis of the fourteenth century"?

by ghostof_IamBeepBeep2

The Wikipedia page says that:

According to some historians, the modern capitalist system has its origin in the "crisis of the fourteenth century", a conflict between the land-owning aristocracy and the agricultural producers, or serfs.

However it doesn't give any citations. Do you have any recommendations for texts that go over this topic and act as an introduction to it?

sunagainstgold

I'd actually suggest you start with an article:

  • Howard Kaminsky, "From Lateness to Waning to Crisis: The Burden of the Later Middle Ages," Journal of Early Modern History 4, no. 1 (2000): 85-125

The "crisis of the fourteenth century" or "crisis of the late Middle Ages" is actually a broader term in medieval scholarship. In the sense that the Wiki article is using it, it seems to me to be more specifically linked to what Marxist historiography has called a "crisis of feudalism," in which peasant production cannot keep up with lordly overconsumption, the economy stagnates, peasants resist, and as Marxism predicts feudalism evolves to the next phase in economic evolution which is capitalism.

Kaminsky's article discusses both the Marxists and their respondents, and the broader idea of a "fourteenth century crisis." I'd start with that, and pick up from his bibliography (well, footnotes) what interests you from there.