The Economy of Medieval Wales, 1067–1536 is a short book. There are in all eighty-nine pages of text, accompanied by extensive footnotes, a very useful bibliography, and a good index. In this short space, Matthew Stevens attempts a survey of the economy of medieval Wales from the first Norman intrusions of 1067, which saw the foundation of the fortified sites that would become Monmouth and Chepstow, to the Act of Union between England and Wales in 1536. His main purpose in writing the book was to draw together for both students and historians the scattered and often overlooked research on the economy of Wales in the past century or more in a sensible narrative relating it to both English and European historiography.

Stevens meets this considerable challenge with an excellent introductory historiographical survey of published work on the economy of medieval Wales and then through three substantive chapters. The first deals with the early history, conquest, and colonization of Wales from 1067 to 1315; the second the Welsh economy at its apex, from 1282 to 1348; and the third the crises and restructuring between 1315 and 1536. Finally, in place of a conclusion summarizing everything that has gone before, Stevens compares what happened in medieval Wales to the three main models used to explain medieval economic change: population and resources, neo-Marxism and class struggle, and commercialization and urbanization. Of the final chapter more later because in some ways it is the best part of the book.

Does it work? Yes, although one can feel Stevens struggling slightly in chapter 3, on the late medieval crises, more from lack of evidence than anything else. Stevens argues that economy and society were very much related to the geography of Wales, where only 14 percent of the land is suitable for arable agriculture. The remainder, mainly over the 150-meter contour line and with marginal soils, was used for grazing large flocks of cattle and sheep. However, arable farming yielded 5.6 times as much energy per acre in calorific terms as dairying, and 18.6 times as raising beef cattle. By 1100, the arable lands were already full, and any population expansion could only take place on marginal soils best suited for pastoral agriculture, at the expense of a significant energy deficit. The geography placed real limitations on population growth. The land could not support more people than the 250,000 to 300,000 who lived there around 1300. Social structure also limited enterprise and the introduction of such new techniques as were available in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The unit of production was the extended family over four generations (gwely, plural gwelyau), and partible inheritance was practiced, leading to the constant division of holdings. Although there was an extraordinary increase in the number of towns, they were mostly small and offered little by way of new market opportunities. Coin was in short supply compared with the huge increase in the circulating medium in thirteenth-century England, and in these circumstances, it is not surprising that an active land market did not emerge to smooth out inequalities in holdings and encourage enterprise to boost agrarian production.

There was also another enemy with which the Welsh had to contend: colonization and conquest. English settlers forced the Welsh from the prime arable lands, while the Marcher lords and the English crown placed heavier and heavier burdens upon a conquered people. By 1300, or earlier, two levels of society had emerged in Wales—the dominant English and the oppressed Welsh. If lack of evidence makes substantive judgement on the consequences of the famines and cattle plagues of the early fourteenth century and the arrival of plague after 1348 difficult, we are left in no doubt that Glyndŵr's revolt brought disaster. It led to the destruction of towns, the ruining of rural property, and to wholesale depopulation. The increasing rapacity of the Marcher lords only made matters worse. They sought to offset the decline in the rental income from their estates by placing more and more financial and legal burdens on their Welsh tenants whose response was to vote with their feet. Stevens leaves us with a grim picture of late medieval Wales, where men, women, and money migrated to England, leaving behind a land wracked by lawlessness with the only beneficiaries a new Welsh squirearchy eager to build new estates from deserted lands.

The final chapter should make those who seek to model the medieval European economy think again. What happened in Wales cannot easily be explained by applying any of the three main models—population and resources, neo-Marxism and class struggle, and commercialization and urbanization—or even by taking parts of each of them to make a new model. Wales was socially, geographically, and economically different from England, northern France, or the Low Countries, and what happened there may provide us with a better comparator for the future analysis of the economies of other small nations of medieval Europe. Why not add to this regions of larger nations, including England north of the Trent? This may be a short book, but we should thankful for its brevity and clarity and acknowledge that it fills an important vacant space for students of the medieval English, Welsh, and West European economies.