Economic Expansion in Central Greece in the Eleventh Century

Abstract

A familiar orthodoxy in Byzantine history is that the empire's economy began to stagnate in the eleventh century. It was a turning-point marked by the development of large estates at the expense of independent peasants and the onset of demographic decline. The demographic trend has been much discussed and generally pessimistic conclusions have been reached. Recently, Lemerle has asserted that the labour force was less plentiful than land. This view has been questioned by Lefort who uses evidence from the archive of Iberon to suggest that population was increasing from the eleventh century. This paper examines the problem in another region, using the Theban tax-register as evidence that agricultural production was intensified in the eleventh century, a clear sign of an increase in population.