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Medieval Technology and Social Change examines the role of technological innovation in the rise of social groups during the Middle Ages. The feudal nobles achieved their status, institutions, and even distinctive emotions through a sudden mutation in methods of warfare during the early eighth century. Between the sixth and eighth centuries a cluster of inventions profoundly altered peasant life in Northern Europe, and by increasing food supplies provided the basis for urbanization. In the new cities, craftsmen, and engineers applied natural power and labor-saving devices to industrial production from the year 1000 onward and laid the foundations of capitalism.
Lynn White, Jr., is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles. Before that, he taught at Princeton and Stanford Universities, and was President of Mills College from 1948 to 1958. He is a fellow of the Mediaeval Academy of America, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technology, and the Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1958. He is also the author of Medieval Religion and Technology, Collected Essays.
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