Beyond lords and peasants focuses upon the emergence of a rural elite across medieval Europe, with chapters exploring a wide range of topics from the causes of economic differentiation in the countryside to its consequences for the village community. This is an interesting collection of essays that sheds light on the complexity of medieval society and the extent to which historical enquiry has moved beyond the traditional lord–peasant paradigm. The contributors focus upon England, Valencia and Flanders, bringing an attractive range of European studies to English-speaking historians and students, although the decision not to study a wider selection of countries, especially Eastern Europe, is perhaps a missed opportunity. Each chapter provides a bibliography of further reading, much of which is not in English, showing the importance of collections of essays like this in enabling the dissemination of research across national historiographical boundaries. The editors explore these boundaries in the first chapter on the concept of the village community and social mobility, showing how national research agendas have affected the pace and nature of historical enquiry into the topic, from Marc Bloch and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in France to R. H. Tawney and Rodney Hilton in England.

In chapter 2, Vicent Baydal Sala and Ferran Esquilache Marti provide a much-needed and critical review of existing research on Muslim communities in the Kingdom of Valencia, not only revealing how little is known about these exploited tenants but also how some families were able to succeed under these conditions. Much like in Christian communities, ‘two or three families always stood out from the rest due to their high level of wealth’, even though their economic activities or methods of management do not appear significantly different from other members of the community (pp. 63–64). Miriam Müller explores economic differentiation within the English peasantry and the extent to which lordship provided an external factor in the construction of communal identities in chapter 3. She shows the impact that differences in landholding patterns could have on other aspects of social life for a range of manors in Wiltshire and Suffolk, including inheritance patterns. Despite highlighting the importance of internal disputes, however, Müller emphasises the fact that ‘communities still worked together cooperatively, especially against their lord’ and that ‘seigniorial policies could decide whether a manor saw stark divisions in wealth and status’ (pp. 83–4). By comparison, Vicent Royo Perez shows the extent to which conflict did not necessarily follow economic differentiation within communities in rural Valencia. Although wealthy peasants enriched themselves at the expense of the whole community in disputes over pasture, this same elite often did not act as a united group. Considerable social mobility and divergent political interests created lines of fracture within the community that intersected levels of wealth.

In a wide-ranging chapter, Lies Vervaet uses an institutional study of the St John's hospital of Bruges to explore differences in the use and significance of leaseholds in inland and coastal Flanders, adding the important distinction that ‘leasehold not only varied regionally…but also according to the strategy of the landowner’ (p. 134). This was not only because there were different forms of leasehold on the estate, but also because St John's had no interest in maximising profits, preferring to use their leaseholders to obtain food security, with rents paid predominantly in kind. Chapter 6 by Frederic Aparisi Romero explores the development of the notarial profession as a source of income and social prestige in the Kingdom of Valencia, showing the role it played in enabling the rise of some families in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In particular, he shows how Antoni Ferrando, the son of a wealthy peasant family, provided an interface between the town and countryside by providing services to people from the Gandia area upon their arrival in Valencia. In chapter 7, Kristof Dombrecht shows how economic differentiation manifested itself in the funeral arrangements of rural communities north of Bruges in the sixteenth century. Not only does he explore traditional topics like the importance of being buried in the church, but also he emphasises the very different audible arrangements at funerals, with different bells being rung dependent on the expense of the funeral. Over the sixteenth century there was an increase in funerals using both the most expensive bell and no bell at all, reflecting economic differentiation of the countryside, with increasing numbers of wealthy farmers and rural poor.

Chapters 8 and 9 focus on the Campine area in the sixteenth century, the former concentrating upon the domination of local office by the rural elite, and the latter showing the significance of the commons to both elites and poor peasants. Eline Van Onacker explores the characteristics of the rural elite to the north-east of Antwerp, showing the importance of the common wastes for commercial pastoral farming, but also emphasising that this elite was composed of a broad layer of ‘true independent peasants’, consisting of 20 to 30 per cent of the richest villagers. She concludes that ‘a communal society leadership took a form that was very different from the ones in commercialising societies’ (p. 213). Maika De Keyzer, in comparison, focuses upon how the commons evolved, enabling access to both elites and peasants, primarily because each paid a fee for their livestock on the common wastes. Unlike other areas of Europe, however, there was no introduction of ‘stinting’ and so no restrictions on the number of animals individuals placed on the commons, because no one group was sufficiently powerful or organised enough to enforce exclusive rights.

The volume is a welcome contribution that, whilst it includes two areas which have featured prominently in the CORN research network, brings south-western Europe into greater focus. Christopher Dyer provides a conclusion on the importance of the contributions, whilst in his preface Ferran Garcia-Oliver notes that the common elements amongst Valencian, English and Flemish peasants are ‘that social mobility, mainly focused around elites, broke the “chains” of lordly power and serfdom’ and ‘that the fundamental decisions that organised agrarian development moved towards the city and the market’ (p. 20). Beyond lords and peasants is an admirable effort at exploring the causes and consequences of the emergence of a rural elite in Western Europe in the later middle ages.