Black Death

The book begins by describing village Sennely. He describes the people and some of their different roles. Very quickly, he goes into the occurrences that happened when the Black Death Struck. However, to my surprise, this book is not about the Plague.

After talking about Sennely, Huppert promptly goes on to talk about the rest of Europe and the focuses in on different large cities. He goes into great detail when describing some of the cities. He talks quite a bit about the relationship between those that live in the cities and those in the country sides.

Then he describes how the communities held together. Huppert writes about the relationships and bonds that made their social structure hold together. Most of the first part the book is about the peasants and the poor urbanites but in the fourth chapter he begins to discuss the urban elite. It is here where Huppert explains the power crisis of cities. He talked extensively about who held the power in different cities and the powers held by communes and the Crafts. Some of the systems laid out include worker, renters and officials.

In chapter Five Huppert discusses taxation and the resistance to it. Included in that idea are those that are not subject to taxation. That is how he begins his argument about the privileged estates and their role in society. This is correlated with how they kept their role.

Next the topic shift back to rural life. I would say that Huppert devotes the entire chapter six to illustrating how bad peasants had it, which ultimately leads to his next point. This was