In recent years several attempts have been made to use institutional theory to explain this divergence between the Middle East and Europe. Most of these attempts focus on the organization of international trade.
The fabric of society: The organization of textile manufacturing in the Middle East and Europe, c. 700 – c. 1500
October 7, 2012 By
A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great
October 4, 2012 By
Despite their isolation and poverty, the Slavic plowmen succeeded in settling this unforgiving region, expanding their numbers, and, most importantly, creating the beginnings of a trading network along the many rivers of the region—the western Dvina, the Volkhov, the northern Dvina, and the Dniepr and its tributaries.
Sailing with the Mu’allim: The Technical Practiceof Red Sea Sailing during the Medieval Period
September 30, 2012 By
The status of the Red Sea as a lane of communication be-tween the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean has beenwidely commented upon…The medieval period was no exception to this. The establishment of Mecca as a centre of pilgrimage and theincreasing importance of Cairo both served to provide further motives for seafaring activity along and across theRed Sea.
Medieval Fairs: an archaeologist’s approach
September 30, 2012 By
This paper intends to explore some of the possibilities offered by the physical and conceptual structures of fairs towards the interpretation of medieval culture from the viewpoint of an archaeologist working largely in southern Italy.
The Amber Trail in early medieval Eastern Europe.
September 30, 2012 By
The standard method employed in characterization studies of amber, namely infrared spectrography, can discriminate roughly between Baltic amber and amber from other European sources…
Singers, advisers, and servants: role of eunuchs from a historical context
September 24, 2012 By
According to the Book of Matthew, Jesus said that there were eunuchs made of men, who had made them- selves by their fathers to be that way for heaven’s sake, and if they have received such a procedure, then let them keep it. Jesus referred to castration as an infallible way to achieve celibacy. And records of Christian history indicate that many Christian religious figures were castrated.
Epidemic Trade
September 18, 2012 By
This paper studies the spread of the Black Death as a proxy for the intensity of medieval trade flows between 1346 and 1351
Irish Viking Age silks and their place in Hiberno-Norse society
September 17, 2012 By
The silk remains from Viking Age Ireland open a window through which we glimpse their world in many of its different and intriguing aspects.
Fossa Carolina: The First Attempt to Bridge the Central European Watershed
September 16, 2012 By
Beside the intention of Charlemagne to build a continuous waterway network for his extensive travels, there are two more possible reasons for connecting the river systems of Main and Danube.
The Black Road – Trade and State-building in Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa
August 26, 2012 By
By the early fourteenth century, the Mediterranean was approaching maturity as a commercial structure. Various arteries of exchange brought into its scope the full range of European, African and Asian commodities.
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
August 19, 2012 By
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
‘Images of the Other: Venice’s Perception of the Knights of Malta’
August 15, 2012 By
The hostile perception which Venice generally entertained of the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes and Malta was not an attitude which the Republic secretly assumed and secretly endeavoured with much effort to disguise.
Economy of Ragusa, 1300 – 1800: The Tiger of Mediaeval Mediterranean
July 24, 2012 By
An economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe.
From Wine to Beer: Changing Patterns of Alcoholic Consumption, and Living Standards, in Later Medieval Flanders, 1300 – 1550
July 23, 2012 By
The basic problem with the ‘hop’ thesis is that the Flemish evidence for the relative shift from wine to beer consumption comes too late. My primary sources are the annual revenues from sales of excise tax- farms on wine and beer consumption recorded in the treasurers’ accounts of two towns: Bruges and Aalst.
Pervenimus Edessam: The Origins of a Great Christian Centre Outside the Familiar Mediaeval World
July 17, 2012 By
This is the meeting place of the western and eastern worlds, for near here passed the movements between Palestine and Mesopotamia associated with Abraham, near here the Assyrians made their last stand after their capital fell in 610 B.C., and near here Crassus ill-advised attempt to press eastwards came to an end.
Motivations and Response to Crusades in the Aegean: c.1300-1350
July 16, 2012 By
Since the Fourth Crusade, there had been a permanent Latin settlement in the Aegean made up primarily of the Venetians who had fought alongside the Frankish knights in 1204.
Fish trade in Norse Orkney and Caithness: a zooarchaeological approach
July 15, 2012 By
The trade of dried fish played an important role in the transformation from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages in Scandinavian polities such as Arctic Norway.
Long Distance Trade Partnerships and Social dynamic in Medieval Genoa
July 8, 2012 By
Likewise, for those specifically addressing the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the participation of the dominant class to the Italian medieval commercial revolution often run contrary to account that pits the nobility against the urban merchants.
Aspects of the Anglo-Hanseatic conflict in the fifteenth century
July 8, 2012 By
The German Hanse, whose rise and decline spanned almost four centuries, was a rather unique institution in late medieval Europe.
Jewish trading in Fes on the eve of the Almohad conquest
June 24, 2012 By
The status of Jewish communities under Almohad rule has been the subject of scholarly interest for different reasons notably in the framework of the disruption of convivencia in al-Andalus among the people of the three abrahamic faiths.
The Squirrel Fur Trade in 14th Century Novgorod
June 24, 2012 By
Bulgar-on-the Volga was the first documented trade center which channeled fur from Northern Europe to the rest of the world.
Armed and expected: Traders and their Ways in Viking Times
June 3, 2012 By
The Baltic traders’ stimulation for trading with foreign countries was caused by the shortage of iron, the necessity to obtain good arms, salt, metals for bronze manufacturing, and silver.
The Infrastructure of the Novgorodian Fur Trade in the Pre-Mongol Era (ca. 900-ca. 1240)
May 6, 2012 By
The urge to find additional supplies of pelts and better-quality furs drove not only the Novgorodian traders and tribute collectors to cross the Urals during the Middle Ages, but later the Muscovites to colonize Siberia and even later the Russian Empire to explore and establish control over the Russian Far East and Alaska.
Marco Polo really did go to China, new study finds
May 1, 2012 By
A thorough new study of Chinese sources by University of Tübingen Sinologist Hans Ulrich Vogel dispels claims that Venice’s most famous traveler never truly went as far as China.
Novgorod the Great and the Hanseatic League
April 8, 2012 By
Novgorod played a significant role in the complex maritime networks that connected Russia with Northern and Western Europe during this period, the most important of which being the Hanseatic League, and developed into a thriving cosmopolitan society while most major Russian cities were still struggling to rebuild and adjust after the Mongol invasion.
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