This text surveys the social and economic development of the German speaking lands from the age of the Black Death to the eve of the Thirty Years War. It outlines the political geography of the German lands, the aristocratic character of the Empire as a constitutional polity based on a society of Estates, and the changes in society and economy in the wake of the late medieval agrarian crisis. It examines in detail divergent regional and economic trends, and the widening social gulf between the West German landlordship and the new seigneurialism east of the Elbe, and gives wide coverage of urban and rural revolts.