Money and trade in Viking-Age Scandinavia
This paper addresses the question of how money was conceived and used in trade in the Viking Age and before, but starts with some brief reflections on the role of gifts.
Venetian Trading Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean
To understand the system of business relations within the commercial network of the Republic of Venice, this article adopts a network analysis that differs from a standard narrative based on a privileged subset of actors or relations. It allows us to examine the socially mixed group of entrepreneurs, brokers, and shippers at the heart of Venice’s economic system.
Did Purchasing Power Parity Hold in Medieval Europe?
This paper employs a unique, hand-collected dataset of exchange rates for five major currencies (the lira of Barcelona, the pound sterling of England, the pond groot of Flanders, the florin of Florence and the livre tournois of France) to consider whether the law of one price and purchasing power parity held in Europe during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
England’s First Attempt to Break the Commercial Monopoly of the Hanseatic League, 1377-1380
During the second half of the fourteenth century English traders first seriously threatened the Hanseatic League’s commercial monopoly in the Baltic. The League, attempting to defendits monopoly, treated the English unjustly,where upon in 1377 the English Parliament rescinded the charter that granted the League important concessions and privileges in its English trade.
Boundaries in the making – Historiography and the isolation of late medieval Bohemia
This paper deals with an episode of early 15th century Bohemian history. During the so-called Hussite wars, a coalition of Catholic powers tried to establish a far-reaching blockade on trade and commerce against the kingdom of Bohemia, which then was considered to be a hotbed of heresy, and to be rebellious against its legitimate ruler and the papal church.
Kingdom, emporium and town: the impact of Viking Dublin
In recent years the precise location and nature of Viking Dublin have been much debated. It is now generally accepted that there was a longphort phase from 841 to 902: a period of enforced exile from 902 to 917, and thereafter a dún phase.
Where medieval London got its fish from
During the 13th century the supply of fish to London dramatically changed from a local supply to one important from outside England.
Time, space and power in later medieval Bristol
With a population of almost 10,000, Bristol was later medieval England’s second or third biggest urban place, and the realm’s second port after London. While not particularly large or wealthy in comparison with the great cities of northern Italy, Flanders or the Rhineland, it was a metropolis in the context of the British Isles.
Wax or wane? Insect perspectives on human environmental interactions
The sites discussed in this paper include a range of sites investigated on national road schemes and other development projects across Ireland, covering a long time-span from the Neolithic period through to the medieval period.
The Daily Life of Slavery and the Global Reach of Slavery in Medieval Egypt, 969-1250 CE
This dissertation examines the geography of the slave trade, the role of slavery in the household, and the lives of domestic slave women in the Egyptian Jewish community under the rule of the Fatimid caliphate and Ayyubid sultanate
The Economy of Early Medieval Ireland
The Old Irish law tracts have been the subject of many serious studies. In the early twentieth century the forensic philology of the great European Celticists, such as Rudolf Thurneysen or Kuno Meyer, prepared the ground for later philologists, such as Daniel Binchy and Liam Breatnach.
Why did Medieval Slave Traders go to Finland?
The demand for blonde girls and boys was so lucrative that slave traders would hunt for these people as far away as northern Finland, a recent study finds.
Bjarmaland and interaction in the North of Europe from the Viking Age until the Early Middle Ages
This article intends to look at interaction in the very north of early medi- eval Europe with Bjarmaland as a starting point. After a short introduction to sources and historiography about Bjarmaland, the main content of the sources will be shortly discussed in order to establish what kind of informa- tion the written sources have to offer.
What is an Australasian parrot doing in a 15th century Italian painting?
The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo is a species of parrot native to Australia and eastern Indonesia. However, you can also see one in the Madonna della Vittoria, a painting made in 1496 by Andrea Mantegna.
Arctic encounters between Norse and Natives
Contact between the Norse and Native peoples in Canada’s Arctic was more extensive and earlier than first believed, according to recent archaeological evidence.
Notarial Convention in the Facilitation of Trade and Economics in Mid-Thirteenth Century Marseille
This paper examines Marseillaise notarial documents of 1248 from the cartulary of Girauld Amalric. Amalric’s cartulary demonstrates how notarial techniques and related legal conventions facilitated Marseille’s long- and short-distance trade.
Trading Networks, Monopoly and Economic Development in Medieval Northern Europe: an Agent-Based Simulation of Early Hanseatic Trade
Little is known, however, on the emergence of this Hanseatic trading system in the high Middle Ages, a period characterised by a significant migration into the Baltic region and the foundation of numerous towns alongside the Baltic sea’s southern shore.
The politico-religious landscape of medieval Karelia
In historical sources the Karelians appear in the 12th century although archaeological excavations suggest that the amalgamation of groups of Baltic Finns, centered on the Karelian Isthmus, that came together from east and west respectively to form them originated in the late Iron Age and early Viking Age.
Land and Sea Communications, Fourth–Fifteenth Centuries
The principle that the active and coordinated collaboration of nature and man is an essential requirement for the creation of a network of communications is of fundamen- tal importance.
The Dual Crises of the Late-Medieval Florentine Cloth Industry, c.1320 – c.1420
The consequences of that first economic crisis, in the ensuing transformation of the Florentine cloth industry, contained the very seeds that spawned the second and far more major crisis, which led to the inexorable downfall of this once majestic industry, by the early fifteenth century.
The Zaccaria Deal: Contracts and options to fund a Genoese shipment of alum to Bruges in 1298
This paper analyses one of the most fascinating late medieval commercial contracts. Some have advanced that it is was the first ever written maritime insurance.
The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
Life for the revolutionary peasants was structured by feudal ties and obligations. The villein was tied to the soil until he could buy his freedom. He lived in a wattle and daub hut with his family and animals on a floor of mud. Work began at dawn on his few (often separated) strips of land; he was obligated to work on his lord’s land three days a week, tend and shear his sheep, feed his swine, and sow and reap his crops.
Tremors in the Web of Trade: Complexity, Connectivity and Criticality in the Mid-Eighth Century Eurasian World
Events within a fifteen-year period in mid-eighth century Eurasia included the Abbasid revolution, An Lu-shan’s Rebellion in Tang China, and the collapse or emergence of empires from Frankish Europe to Tibet to the kingdom of Srivajaya.
Legal Competition in the Medieval World
Legal Competition in the Medieval World Aaron L. Bodoh-Creed (Cornell University) Cornell University: Working Paper, June 30 (2009) Abstract We develop a model of competition…
Shops and Shopping in Britain: from market stalls to chain stores
The first retail shops, as opposed to those of craftsmen and artisans selling goods they made themselves, were drapers, mercers, haberdashers and grocers.