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The Brenner debate was a major historical debate in Past & Present following the thesis of Robert Brenner's article "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe" in the seventieth issue. Postan and Hatcher characterised the debate as attempting to determine whether Malthusian cyclic explanations of population and development or social class explanations governed demographic and economic change in Europe. The debate confounded existing beliefs regarding class relations in the Economy of England in the Middle Ages and agricultural societies with serfdom in general, engaging 20th century historiography of the economics of feudalism in the West and the Soviet Union. Contributions by Brenner and others are published in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe (Past and Present Publications 1987), edited by Trevor Aston and C.H.E. Philpin.