Introduction
It is unusual to find a test case showing the effect of social structure on technological change. In Medieval England, between the years of 1066 and 1500 AD, the horse gradually replaced the ox for plowing and hauling. This provides an excellent example of the effects of social structure on technological innovation. Briefly, peasants, not lords, led the way in innovating. This post explains why.
First, the book that this post is based on is Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation by John Langdon. Langdon carefully marshals evidence that the horse gradually replaced the ox as a draft animal. The evidence is extensive, and he should be commended for doing a thorough and careful job of illuminating this corner of medieval technology.
In 1066, the ox was the universal draft animal in England. We know this from the Domesday Book, compiled by William the Conqueror after his conquest of England. This was a survey of every building and piece of land in England, and it included detail accounts of how many horses and oxen were at each manor.
The most striking thing about the study was the rate of penetration of the horse after 1066. Surprisingly, peasants adopted the horse much faster than their lords. For example, in 1300 AD, 45% of the draft animals owned by peasants were horses, but only 25% owned by manorial lords were horses. Since the soils, climate, crops and costs were the same, why should peasants own more horses than lords? Most people would expect exactly the opposite.
Serfs gave 3 days of service on their lord each week, and on the other 3 days they took care of their own plots. They had Sundays off. In effect, they were half slave and half free. In their service to their lord, they were essentially slaves from a labor viewpoint. The lord got a certain amount of work time, and there were no wages for it. They did what he or his bailiff (i.e. overseer or foreman) told them to do.
On the other 3 days, he was free to plow and cultivate his own plot and earn a living. He managed his own time for these 3 days, so during this time he was more like an entrepreneur or free man. He was free to spend his money and time as he saw fit. Some peasants became quite well-to-do.
The Horse from a Bailiff’s Viewpoint
A bailiff ran the estate (aka demesne), of the lord. Circa 1280, Walter of Henley wrote a treatise on estate management titled Husbandry (It was actually written in Norman French and titled Le Dite de Hosebondrie). For many years it was considered authoritative on the agricultural management of a manor.
Walter of Henley’s advice is to use oxen. There are several reasons given, two of which were most important. The first reason was that at the end of its useful life, an ox could be fattened and sold for beef, whereas eating horsemeat was taboo in England. The hides of both animals could be used for leather.
His second reason has to do with the peasant. He states that ‘due to the malice of the plowman’, a horse-drawn plow moved no faster than an ox-drawn plow. Manors used teams of 8 oxen or 5 horses to draw a plow. A team of horses could pull faster, if the plowman wanted it to go faster. Apparently, plowmen didn’t want to go faster.
Here is a common complaint of all managers. Labor unions call what Walter of Henley wanted a ‘speed up’, and the common experience of management is that labor resists them. In the auto industry, the speed of an assembly line is determined in collective bargaining between management and the UAW. Union workers resent working harder for the same wage. If Walter of Henley is to be believed, Medieval plowmen also resented it.
Understand that there was no wonderful upside to plowing faster for the serf. Walter of Henley was not planning to reward them. They would complete the plowing sooner, and then he was planning to give them more work to fill up the time.
When we look at it from the serf’s viewpoint, when doing his own plowing, speeding up made sense. He got his plowing chores completed sooner, and thereby earned a day off. According to Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, there is little evidence that they used it to plow more land, although they may have used the time to start a business or do something else. The point is that time off is its own reward, and many technological changes occur for convenience. You cannot always measure technological change by money. Faster adoption of the horse by peasants was exactly what you would expect.
Moreover, the peasants bought horses used, and the horse was cheaper than an ox because its carcass could not be sold for meat. Since it could not, horses were not as valuable as oxen.
It is rare to see such a case study, but it has wider implications. In an all-slave society, where both Walter of Henley and the serfs were slaves (such as the Roman empire), innovation is even less likely, since Walter of Henley, if he implemented a change, would not see any of the gains, either. On the other hand, if it fails, he gets the ax, i.e. he is sold as a ‘bad’ slave and must labor on a farm somewhere. There is no incentive for him to innovate.
Innovation usually occurs as a ‘push from the bottom’, rather than being determined by the top of society. Innovation increases as the bottom of society gains more clout and decreases when the top of society gains clout. Innovation is disruptive, which means that the people at the top, who already have it made, don’t necessarily want it. It generally helps the bottom of society. When their living standards rise, then the upper classes eventually gain some advantage from new and better products. The bottom gains an immediate advantage, which is why inventing and engineering have always been considered lower-class trades, unlike law, which is for the upper classes and is known as a ‘profession’.
Finally, if certain members of the upper classes achieve their wish of a totalitarian, top-down command structure, innovation will grind to a halt. That is what happened in the old Soviet Union, and that is what will happen to future totalitarian states. The Roman Empire can best be described as a totalitarian state, and its innovation stagnated as a result.
Jesus set off a social revolution by inveighing against the rich and powerful and preferring the poor and weak. The results are all around us. Inspired by Him, His followers created the modern, technological/scientific world we live in, and we should not let the world forget it.
Sources:
Langdon, John, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, paperback edition, 2002, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Walter of Henley’s Husbandry
https://archive.org/details/walterhenleyshu01cunngoog
There are some download options on this web page.
