dually weakened through the Middle ages, increasing the flexibility of the rural econnmy.
4. Scatterdd strips. This was a distribution of individual holdings, individual peasants (and the lord) owning strips within larger fields scattered about the manor. Where we find scattered strips or long fields, we have an indication of developed manorial agriculture. On the one hand, scattered strips required considerable collective decision-making, with resulting inefficiencies, and further inefficiencies in moving a plow team from strip to strip. On the other hand, the lessened the impact of highly localized disasters, such as a flooded field, on individual households.
5. Population increase and economic growth.
According to Malthus' theory, population tends to increase geometrically, while resources to support that population tend to grow at a linear rate. Thus, populations tend to rise quickly until they press the limits of available resources, but population growth is then constrained until and unless additional resources become available. For a given productive capacity (both resources, such as land, and technology for exploiting it), a population expands until most people are pushed down to the subsistence level, after which the population remains more or less constant.
In Europe, during the period 650-1350, there was a steady, relatively gradual, but very substantial increase of population, perhaps doubling between 650 and 1000, then doubling again by 1350. The pattern of this increase strongly suggests that the reason for this population increase was economic growth, adding to the productive resources available to the European population.
It is true that 650 was at the end of a long period of political, economic, and demographic decline, so that Europe was underpopulated relative to its productive potential. We might then suppose that the population increase was simply a population expanding to its Malthus...