R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) and M. M. Postan (1899–1981) were outstanding figures who each in different ways had a profound impact on the development of the field of economic history. As Christopher Dyer reminds us in his contribution to this volume, the bold interpretations of their periods of interest that Tawney and Postan produced were sometimes necessarily based on relatively slight evidence, and have been challenged by subsequent research. Yet the historical work of the two men continues to stimulate agrarian historians in particular, as demonstrated by the essays in this book, and in other recent collections edited by Jane Whittle in 2013 and by John Drendel in 2015.

Custom and Commercialisation is an enjoyable volume containing the fruits of important recent research supported with some nice maps and illustrations. Its origins lie in a colloquium at the Institute of Historical Research organised by the editors in 2013; fittingly, these two young scholars held the Economic History Society's prestigious Tawney and Postan Junior Research Fellowships at the time. In addition to a wide-ranging introduction by the editors, Dyer's overview of the approaches of Tawney and Postan, and a stimulating afterword by Andy Wood, the volume comprises chapters on the late medieval period by Alexandra Sapoznik, Sheila Sweetinburgh and Tom Johnson; contributions with an early modern focus by Bowen, William D. Shannon, Simon Sandall and John Gaisford; and chapters by John Broad, David Rollison and Brown, which cover relatively long periods and usefully cross the traditional medieval-early modern divide. It might be thought that the territory explored by this book is too large and diverse to make for a coherent volume, but this turns out not to be the case. The editors and contributors have worked hard to address common themes, three of which stand out in particular. Although the book is divided into four thematic parts, in fact virtually all of the contributions develop one or more of these themes to some degree.

First, and as is fitting for a title in the University of Hertfordshire Press's ‘Studies in Local and Regional History’ series, the book makes a compelling case for the special value of the fine-grained local study as a way of doing social and economic history. As Wood argues, the micro-historical approach continues to offer distinctive methodological and intellectual advantages even in an era when some are championing ‘Big History’ and ‘Big Data’ as the way forward. The studies in this volume support his point well. A connected point is that the book makes a concerted effort to look more closely at little studied or ‘marginal’ regions that have tended not to figure much in the overarching narratives of English agrarian change produced by the likes of Tawney and Postan. Bowen's examination of common rights in Shropshire and Shannon's chapter on woodland resources in Furness (part of the historic county of Lancashire) are just two of the more notable examples of this.

The second major theme or contribution of the book concerns the scale and organisation of industries and non-agricultural employment in the countryside. To illustrate this one might pick out Sapoznik's innovative study of the medieval iron industry, Brown's investigation of the exploitation of Durham coal, and Gaisford's detailed exploration of the growth of the west Wiltshire cloth industry in the sixteenth century, though there are plenty of other examples. Since the book is particularly concerned with coastal, upland and woodland areas situated outside England's agricultural heartlands, the prominence given to industries is not surprising. Yet the studies collected here also provide a useful reminder of the ubiquity of secondary and tertiary occupations throughout the late medieval and early modern countryside, and not just in specialised areas.

The third theme consistently explored in this book is the relationship between custom and commercialisation. In looking at this idea, the authors are especially influenced by Tawney, who wrote of the ‘struggle between custom and competition, which colours so much of the economic life of the period’.Footnote ¹ To get to grips with the connections between custom and commerce is not straightforward, not least because ‘custom’ has so many different dimensions (Wood notes here its legal, administrative, cultural and political aspects, for example) and tends to mean different things to different historians. Yet the book does succeed at least in showing that a model that always places custom and commercialisation in opposition is inadequate. Valuable insights into particular aspects of the relationship also emerge in many of the chapters. For instance, Johnson shows how the commercial value of objects from shipwrecks washed up on the Suffolk coast in the fifteenth century was shaped by the customs of the Leiston Abbey's ‘Hethewardmote’ or wreck court, which regulated the right of wreck in its locality. Sweetinburgh, looking at the Kent marshlands in the same period, identifies continuities in the distinctive customs and tenures of the region that influenced the path of commercial development to the advantage of yeomen and husbandmen. Meanwhile the chapters on later centuries, such as Sandall's study of Gloucestershire's Forest of Dean, show how custom could be much more explicitly invoked, not only in efforts to resist increasingly intensive commercial exploitation of local resources, but also (as in Sandall's case study) in support of such moves.

In summary, this is a well-produced and well-priced book that provides good examples of the way in which debates begun by the great historical figures of the last century are being revisited and reshaped by the present generation of economic and social historians of the pre-modern era.