Land, Liberties, and Lordship in a Late Medieval Countryside
Agrarian Structures and Change in the Duchy of Wroclaw

Richard C. Hoffmann (Author)

9780812280906

Hardback, published 29 January 1990

582 pages, 41 illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.8 cm, 1.064 kg

"The product of more than two decades of painstaking research, this impressive and important study recreates the patterns of landholding and social relaitons between lords and peasants in the Silesian duchy of Wroclaw (Breslau) over a three-and-one-half century period. . . . The authoritative and standard work." (Choice)

Richard C. Hoffman's monumental study of rural life in medieval eastern Europe focuses on one region, the Duchy of Wroclaw, from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. The duchy is in many ways a microcosm of medieval European society, and thus Hoffman's analysis addresses issues central to a broader understanding of a vanished society. His analysis of the records of the Duchy of Wroclaw challenges the western stereotypes of east central Europe that have been imposed on its medieval past by modern nationalisms.
Honorable Mention, Wallace K. Ferguson Prize of the Canadian Historical Association.