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1 results

  • Chapter 16 - Conclusion

  • from Part IV - The Logic of Peasant Consumer Behaviour
  • Luis Almenar Fernández, University of València
  • Book:
    The Power of Peasant Consumers
    Published online:
    27 November 2025
    Print publication:
    11 December 2025, pp 321-332

  • Summary

    This conclusion summarises the main findings of this research and highlights its contributions to existing narratives and debates on the development of consumption, material culture, and living standards in European scholarship. The Valencian experience is placed within an international framework to examine the relationship between the late medieval and early modern ‘consumer revolutions’, between consumption and economic growth, and between the economic and the extra-economic driving forces of consumption. It is argued that late medieval consumer societies emerged not as a Malthusian inevitability caused by the Black Death, but as a result of social agency. The improvement of material culture was a deliberate choice to enhance living conditions, driven by existing preferences and aspirations. This silent demand, once met, had lasting effects. The spending power of peasants with higher disposable incomes sustained industries producing mass-consumption goods. The demand from ordinary people was a crucial economic force, stressing the transformative power of peasant consumers.