A CK2 game as Gwenydd and one as Brittany lead to some readings on the Norman Conquest. Most of what I am reading makes the Anglo-Saxon model of land management and government sound at least as efficent as the Norman model, and it sounds like the actual population transfer was miniscule. Yet, somehow, the English population skyrocketted before the Plague.
Why? Was this mostly during the Angevin period later on? The natural result of the first period of stable English borders and minimal inter-English (or Romano-Cumbric) conflict for the first time since the Romans? Was this demographic expansion true of all of the British Isles? Sone areas more affected than others?
Didn't the population rise in all of Europe?
Quote from: Queequeg on July 02, 2012, 12:28:57 AM
A CK2 game as Gwenydd and one as Brittany lead to some readings on the Norman Conquest. Most of what I am reading makes the Anglo-Saxon model of land management and government sound at least as efficent as the Norman model, and it sounds like the actual population transfer was miniscule. Yet, somehow, the English population skyrocketted before the Plague.
Why? Was this mostly during the Angevin period later on? The natural result of the first period of stable English borders and minimal inter-English (or Romano-Cumbric) conflict for the first time since the Romans? Was this demographic expansion true of all of the British Isles? Some areas more affected than others?
This was due to innovations in agricultural technology and technique and occured all over western and central Europe.
Less piracy and vikings and more general wealth in the few hundred years after 1066 than the few hundred years before too.
My understanding was that this was a general phenomenon throughout Europe, the low-point being back in 600 or so, the high-point actually arriving a couple of decades before the advent of the Black Death as the limits of medieval agriculture were reached. Very poor statistics in those days of course, which probably hide a lot of local variation.
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warm_period