What did the minor nobles who extracted all the grain from Serfs do with it? They couldn’t eat it all. Did they just let it rot somewhere? Did they sell it? To who? The townspeople? Where did they get the money?
>>18719086They did not need to sell it for money. They could give it to skilled laborers (eg masons, blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters) in exchange for work/finished products. The average peasant will not need the work of skilled laborers (beyond the blacksmith), so skilled laborers will need someone to feed them, someone who has a lot of grain sitting around and someone who wants their work.Grain is also a very good medium of exchange for minor nobles. Coining money is expensive, and peasants will not be able to deal in anything but the smallest denominations. If the nobles are not near a trade hub, there is no need for coin. If they are near a trade hub, they can sell excess grain to merchants. Grain also is eaten and rots. Ten months after the harvest, there will not be all that much grain left, so those skilled laborers will be willing to work cheaply. This keeps the nobles in constant control of the money supply, based on how much they tax the peasants.
Looking at old contracts of how a castle worked, what salaries were allotted to hire different workers was really interesting. This really revealed to me how a Medieval economy worked. Because they literally stipulated exactly what kind of goods they wanted to have regular access to in the castle and hired exactly the workers needed to get these things. None of that "I just send one of my servants to the market regularly to buy what I need". Nope. Cheese? Beer? You hired people to make cheese and brew beer for your castle. You did not buy it from the brewery in the nearby town. You produced it yourself by hiring servants. It was self-sufficent and surprisingly regulated. Like they thought of everything. From the exact amount of ratios needed, the salaries all exactly considered, to the amount of days the workers would need to work.So what did they do with the grain or other goods in kind? They gave it to their workers. There was never a process, where it went on a market, was subjected to a supply & demand prize finding mechanism and then distributed accordingly.
>>18719086They burned it in the furnace, it existed solely to punish the serfs.
>>18719086Firstly the tithes were never the entirety of the produce generated by the peasantry. Secondly what the other two Anona said. Thirdly they stored it for their own consumption + the consumption of their retainers and for their war service. Fourthly they too had to pay their lieges in tithes.
The serfs had their own fields allotted to them to raise grain to feed themselves and their family and used the village granary or personal caches. In return for their land every family was obligated to send laborers to work in their landlord's estate. It was little different from tenancy, except instead of landlords paying peasants to work their fields and peasants paying that money back to their landlord as rent.The estate was composed of the most productive fields where a more valuable crop like wheat could be grown, as opposed to barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, spelt or some other local variety. The estate had its own granary and sometimes the main hall would be given up to store hay and separate wheat from the chaff in case it rained. During the hectic harvest season even the nobility had to make sacrifices.The granary itself was built to minimize the risk of all this valuable grain spoiling and in a secure place to prevent theft. A common feature was to position it upon plinths, kept off the ground to prevent moisture build up and the entry of rats. Granaries were associated with cats for this latter reason, to see a cat resting nearby surveying its domain was considered an omen of wealth and luck. The Lord's steward would have already been visiting local towns checking on grain prices and contacting merchants, sometimes selling grain in advance at the local grain exchange, rather like the oil futures market or bitcoin. Generally merchants took on the risk of speculating on grain prices while producers wanted a low risk reliable revenue stream.
>>18719382Example from the later middle ages. Until the mid 15th century most would be a wood structure resting on stone plinths with a thatched roof.
>>18719387Once the grain was sold the merchant would arrange delivery, often to another granary in a town where it might then be loaded on a ship and exported. This would happen gradually throughout the year to economize on local resources for transporting the grain, generally barges were the most efficient method and carts were not for long distance travel.You can see on this map the emphasis on rivers, a location was defined by the navigable river that permitted access.
>>18719393Thank you for effortposting Anon
>>18719116The trans-saharan gold trade exchanged mined gold for salt. Consumables were often a substitute for currency,
>>18719387The one thing that always amazes me when looking at pretty much any pre-modern structure is how small they usually are. Whether it's a living space or a building designed for storing large quantities of, in this case, grain, it feels almost comically small. I guess we take for granted how much modernity is capable of making.
>>18720552Population was much smaller as was their needs. Medieval Peasants didn't consume anything big other than grain/legumes to eat, beer to drink, firewood for heat, and iron for their tools
>>18720556In this instance it makes sense for sure, I think it was a mix of visiting old Roman forts along the the Limes Germania and Hadrian's wall where this idea first occurred to me. I remember walking around Vindolanda and asking myself how in the world a legion and it's attached auxiliaries were meant to live in what seemed to me to be a fairly tiny permanent fort. I think it was the barracks for the cavalry detachment in particular that shocked me.
>>18720562Limes Germanicus*
They made alcohol and sold it back to the peasants for 100x the price.
>>18720552I imagine that just a few additional square meters would add up to a lot of additional heating required in colder parts of Europe
>>18720674They had heating for the certain rooms.in the Pricipia and also the baths. The rest of the complex seemed to be unheated. The baths were the largest building. Again it was all foundations, so maybe I was missing something, ironically a more intact 13th century chapel that I also saw on that trip had more reasonable dimensions to my eye.
