p. 365 “The Great European Famine was a catastrophe of a remarkable magnitude. The crisis was initiated by a short-term weather anomaly, bringing about a very rare scenario of three back-to-back harvest failures in 1315, 1316 and 1317. Even though the adverse weather reduced the respective gross crop yields by 25, 25 and 14% respectively, and thus, created a relative shortage, non-negligible proportions of food were still available for human consumption. It was not Nature, however, that spurred the transformation of shortage into famine, it was a combination fo demographic and antropogenic (institutional) factors. … The disposal of gross harvests was managed in accordance with manorial customs, and a disproportional share of crops was invested as seed corn. The food crisis was aggravated further by the malfunctioning of local food markets, where segmentation, preferential trade, hoarding, and a very limited scale of foreign grain imports drove up prives to the point that very few could afford purchasing crops, even though very many desperately needed to do so to compensate for the calorific loss. .. While storage costs (and thus, spoilage rates) went up because of the adverse weather, transportation costs rose because of the combination of bad weather and voilence (especially in the sea). The ongoing warfare also had a devastating and long-lasting impact on food supply, through floral and faunal destrction within the ‘war zone’, which cut local communities off from their natural resources. Furthermore, warfare reduced the access of commoners to food supplies through purveyance sales, extortion and royal taxation, which could not have come at a worse time than 1315-16.”
p. 366 “Although our attempts to estimate the fall in population are far from secure, all available evidence hints that England may have lost at least 15% of her population (and most likely in the area of 15-20%)… teh Lordships of Ireland and south and east wales … may have suffered as badly on account of warfare. Southern and eastern Scotland … seems to have got away with much lighter losses – partially thanks to her demographic, institutional and dietary peculiarities.”
p. 368 The poulation.. resumed growing after the crisis … and seems to have reached its pre-famine levels by the time of the arrival of the plague in 1348″.
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