Agricultural production in the south of the Kingdom of Valencia. Rice growing in Orihuela in the Late Middle Ages. Medievalismo Award

Abstract

The feudal colonization of the southern lands of the Kingdom of Valencia was a progressive reorganization of agricultural areas which entailed a new orientation in agricultural production. This process of change and transformation of the landscape, in both agricultural and residential areas – which were intrinsically related – together with new kinds of land ownership, gradually led to a new socio-economic direction in farm production. This also resulted in the development of some more attractive and speculative crops in crop market networks and in the decline of other crops that had played a more prominent role during the Andalusí period. Rice growing in late medieval Orihuela, its operation and the issues concerning crop production provide a wide range of case studies of the village’s socio-economic reality and of the changes in the agricultural landscape caused by the arrival of the feudal lords to the lands and orchards of Orihuela in the Late Middle Ages.