Most of the articles contained in the present volume are of fairly recent vintage, having been published after 1990 and in quite a few instances, after 1995, They thus reflect the zeitgeist of the 1990s, which has been characterized by a return of interest in the individual, and also in small groups such as households, guilds or neighborhoods.

If we look at this sea change from a point of view immament to the historical discipline, we can explain it as a reaction to the tendency, so typical of the 1960s and 1970s, to view social history as a mere adjunct to economic history. This latter view had been embraced by quite a few scholars of my generation, myself included, as a welcome alternative to the limited and limiting horizons of the `old-style` political and diplomatic history. In the particular brabd of economic history which evolved during the 1970s and 1970s, long-term developments were accorded privileged treatment over and above short-term oscilliations, deemed of lesser importance. Yet the latter, even though they may have been compensated for within a couple of years or so, quite often constituted the significant factor, at least where real people were concerned.

Short term fluctuations affected the lives of ordinary people in a more dramatic fashion than most long-term tendencies, which, when all is said and done, had an impact mainly in the long run. In his seminal work how famine killed off more than half a family of Beauvais weavers. He ended his depressing story with the remark "and all that on account of the bread price"- seventeenth-century grain prices being notorious for their instability. Without any doubt, bread became cheaper again within a very few years; but that was of no help to the dead.