Spencer Dimmock The Development of Agrarian Capitalism: Land and Labour in Norfolk, 1440- 1580 JANE WHITTLE Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000 Reviewed by SPENCER DIMMOCK The aim of Jane Whittle’s book is to identify and explain the origins of agrarian capitalism in England. Its motivation lies in testing Robert Brenner’s influential class-based explanation of the origins of capitalism with a detailed empirical study of historical change. 1 Her study focuses on the village of Marsham, part of the manor of Hevingham Bishops in north-east Norfolk, eastern England, in the period 1440-1580. Comparisons are made with nearby manors and villages where evidence survives. This area was chosen because of its wealth of surviving evidence, Norfolk’s advanced commercial credentials, and its particularly rebellious population having featured strongly in both the 1381 rising and Kett’s rebellion of 1549 (pp. 1-2). Her particular explanation emphasizes property structures and class in the determination of the transition to capitalism, and she accepts Marx’s assertion that the most important aspects of the transition are the dissolution of serfdom and the subsequent expropriation of the peasantry from the land (p. 16). 1 Brenner 1985.