Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire : A Social and Demographic Study

This book applies scientific demographic methods to the study of Byzantine peasantry in a period of feudalization. The author shows that the number of peasants declined in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for reasons that had less to do with catastrophes than with internal social developments. Her book makes the first thorough analysis of this rural society, and one that draws on all available sources. It focuses on village structure and family or kinship groups as well as social and demographic trends. Angeliki Laiou-Thomadakis is Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author of Constantinople and the Latins (Harvard) Originally published in 1977. The **Princeton Legacy Library** uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. Frontmatter List of Graphs, Maps, and Tables (page ix) List of Greek Terms (page xii) Acknowledgments (page xiii) CHAPTER I. The Problem and the Method (page 3) CHAPTER II. The Village (page 24) CHAPTER III. Family and Kinship (page 72) CHAPTER IV. Names (page 108) CHAPTER V. The Dependent Peasant and His Holding (page 142) CHAPTER VI. Size and Movements of Population (page 223) CHAPTER VII. Natural Movements of Population (page 267) APPENDICES I. Lay Proprietors in the Themes of Thessaloniki and Strymon in the Second Half of the Thirteenth and the First Half of the fourteenth Century (page 300) II. Measurement of the Migration Factor (page 305) Bibliography (page 311) Index (page 327)