Where the Middle Ages Begin
In medieval Iberia, particularly from the twelfth century onward, warfare took on some religious overtones. As a consequence, the prisoners of war that appear in the sources were for the most part defined by their religious status, as either Muslims or Christians.
One of the fiercest and most productive historical debates – and one of the most ideology-laden – has been that on the transition from feudalism to capitalism.1 Although interest in this specific debate and its ideological implications seems to be waning now, the importance of reconstructing and explaining long-term changes in economy and society is still clear.
Sumptuary legislation can be defined as a set of regulations, passed down by legislators through statutory law and parliamentary proclamations, that sought to regulate society by dictating what contemporaries could own or wear based on their position within society.
Helena Hamerow on excavations at Southampton, which reshaped our views of the origins of English towns and of long-distance trade in the 8th/9th centuries.
The opinion of historians on the social and economic role played by guilds in late medieval and early modern cities has changed considerably throughout the last century.
Richard Holt recently reminded us that mills were at the forefront of medieval technology and argued persuasively that windmills may have been invented in late twelfth-century England.
In his influential study on political factions in medieval Europe, Jacques Heers demonstrated the importance of factionalism in the political life of the middle ages, at the level of cities and regions as well as at the ‘national’ level.
During this period, the role of the landed aristocracy was changing. With the creation of a professional standing army, in which soldiers were paid a wage, and the use of foreign mercenaries (think of the Swiss Guard), the traditional military function of the nobility receded.
The money that the medieval English made conducted matters of state into the heart of society. The concerted quality of value – the fact that creating a currency connected public authority with every individual holding it – made that unavoidable.
And so, during a period of well developed exchange between the Roman Empire and the Barbaricum, coinciding with the Golden Age and the House of Antonine, Roman coins started to flow more intensively in the reign of the last two Antonine emperors.
Modern historiography has not fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the Silk Roads. As a result, it has failed to understand their antiquity, or to grasp their full importance in Eurasian history.
Within England, the royal household was by far the biggest single customer for cloth,
wax and other high-status goods.
Slavery and the Slave Trade have been age old institutions and practices in almost every continent in the world.
Medieval Market Design: Product Grouping on Medieval Fairs Boerner, Lars (Humboldt University Berlin) Paper given at the European Historical Economics Society Conference (2005) Abstract This paper presents insights into the market microstructure of the late Middle Ages, particularly the market design of medieval fairs. It shows that different product genres were grouped. This grouping was […]
The rise and decline of a great power: Venice 1250-1650 Pezzolo, Luciano (University of Venice) Working Papers, Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari, University of Venice, No. 27/WP/2006 Abstract This essay outlines the rise and decline of the most powerful Italian republican state between the middle ages and the early modern period. It moreover seeks to […]
Early medieval port customs, tolls and controls on foreign trade Middleton, Neil Early Medieval Europe, Vol.13:4 (2005) Abstract The objective of this paper is to offer a fresh perspective on the nature and organization of international trade in early medieval ports from the evidence of documentary sources on tolls and customs, trading practices and controls on […]
The State as an Enforcer in Early Venetian Trade: a Historical Institutional Analysis González de Lara, Yadira (Dep. of Economic Analysis. University of Alicante) Paper given at the Fifth World Congress of Cliometrics - Venice International University • Venice, Italy July 8-11, (2004) latest version: April 13, (2005) Abstract Venice commercial rise hinged on her ability to do business with borrowed […]
The Origins of King’s Lynn? Control of Wealth on the Wash Prior to the Norman Conquest Hutcheson, A.R.J. Medieval Archaeology, 50, (2006) Abstract This paper investigates the archaeology and history of ‘productive’ sites, estate centres and towns between A.D. 600 and 1100 in north-western East Anglia. Whilst it concentrates on a specific sub-region (NW. Norfolk), an […]
The Normans between Byzantium and the Islamic World TRAVAINI, LUCIA Dumbarton Oaks Papers: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.(2001) Abstract When dealing with the subject of monetary transactions and exchanges involving the Normans of Italy, Byzantium, and the Islamic world, scholars have been cautioned to use care when discussing terms such as influence […]
Transparency, Contract Selection and the Maritime Trade of Venetian Crete, 1303-1351 Williamson, Dean V. US Department of Justice, July (2001) Abstract The paper explores how merchants enabled long-distance trade in the Mediterranean before and after the Black Death. The Black Death disrupted the flows of information about commercial prospects upon which merchants depended for deciding when, […]
Money and Morality in 14th century Sweden von Heijne, Cecilia Ephesos to Dalecarlia. Reflections on Body, Space and Time in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. The Museum of National Antiquities, Stockholm. Studies 11.Stockholm Studies in Archeology 48 (2009) Abstract The establishment of the monetary system that came to imbue medieval society brought about a substantial […]
Leveraging Reputation: Guidaticums in Medieval Spain Smith, Daniel J. (George Mason University) Troy University – Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy, October 31 (2010) Abstract The ability of traditional reputational mechanisms to facilitate wide scale self-enforcing exchange becomes severely limited as the number of agents, or their social distance, increases. While ex ante signaling […]
Genoese trade networks in the southern Iberian peninsula: trade, transmission of technical knowledgeand economic interactions Porras, Alberto Garcıa and Garcıa, Adela Fabregas (Departamento de Historia Medieval y Ciencias y Te ́cnicas Historiogra ́ficas, Universidad de Granada, Spain) Mediterranean Historical Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, June (2010) Abstract This paper presents the results of a research project undertaken at the […]
Piracy as Statecraft: The Mediterranean Policies of the Fifth/Eleventh-Century Taifa of Denia Bruce, Travis Al-Masa ̄q, Vol. 22, No. 3, December (2010) Abstract The taifa of Denia on the Iberian eastern seaboard was one of the most dynamic of the regional polities that emerged from the disintegrated Cordovan caliphate. Muja ̄hid al-‘A ̄mir ̄ı based his […]
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