The aim of this project is to contribute to the socioeconomic and demographic history of late Byzantium and the early Ottoman Empire by choosing a well documented region as its particular subject and studying it through the transitional period of the 146' and 15th centuries. As a result, the author works on both sides of the disciplinary frontier between Byzantine and Ottoman studies. The present approach to the social history of the region is based on the process of the distribution of revenue, which is basically a question of land distribution and proprietorship as it was realized in the general context of a predominantly agrarian economy. The first six chapters include a presentation and analysis of matters concerning the possession and control of lands and related revenues in two different sociopolitical contexts, the late Byzantine one, that is marked by decentralization and centrifugal tendencies, opposite the relatively centralist one of the early Ottoman empire. Under those circumstances the establishment of Ottoman rule resulted in the gradual disappearance of the late Byzantine elite of individual landholders. The monasteries also 'suffered a serious reduction of the properties they had obtained during the 14th century. On the other hand, the economic structures and productive activities remained basically the same throughout the two centuries that concern us here irrespective of the imposition of a different system of government and the introduction of new cultural elements that accompanied the Ottoman conquest. These matters form the subject of the last two chapters, which deal with the economic structures and productive activities in the towns of the region (Serres, Zichna and Chrysoupolis) and the villages of the countryside. These two chapters also include a discussion on the measure of the region's population, which constitutes the demographic aspect of the study.