Download or read book Commercial Activity Markets and Entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages written by Ben Dodds and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2011 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous aspects of the medieval economy are covered in this new collection of essays, from business fraud and changes in wages to the production of luxury goods. Long dominated by theories of causation involving class conflict and Malthusian crisis, the field of medieval economic history has been transformed in recent years by a better understanding of the process of commercialisation. Inrecognition of the important work in this area by Richard Britnell, this volume of essays brings together studies by historians from both sides of the Atlantic on fundamental aspects of the medieval commercial economy. From examinations of high wages, minimum wages and unemployment, through to innovative studies of consumption and supply, business fraud, economic regulation, small towns, the use of charters, and the role of shipmasters and peasants as entrepreneurs, this collection is essential reading for the student of the medieval economy. Contributors: John Hatcher, John Langdon, Derek Keene, John S. Lee, James Davis, Mark Bailey, Christine M. Newman, Peter L. Larson, Maryanne Kowaleski, Martha Carlin, James Masschaele, Christopher Dyer

Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in the Middle Ages written by James Davis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Throughout Europe, the collapse of Roman authority from the 5th century fractured existing networks of commerce and trade including shopping. The infrastructure of trade was slowly rebuilt over the centuries that followed with the growth of beach markets, emporia, seasonal fairs and periodic markets until, in the late Middle Ages, the permanent shop re-emerged as an established part of market spaces, both in towns and larger urban centers. Medieval society was a 'display culture' and by the 14th century there was a marked increase in the consumption of manufactures and imported goods among the lower classes as well as the elite. This volume surveys our understanding of medieval retail markets, shops and shopping from a range of perspectives - spatial, material culture, literary, archaeological and economic. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

Download or read book Law in Common written by Tom Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law in Common draws on a large body of unpublished archival material from local archives and libraries across the country, to show how ordinary people in the later Middle Ages - such as peasants, craftsmen, and townspeople - used law in their everyday lives, developing our understanding of the operation of late-medieval society and politics.

Download or read book The Medieval Clothier written by John S. Lee and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2018 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear and accessibly written guide to the medieval cloth-making trade in England.

Download or read book The Wealth of England written by Susan Rose and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wool trade was undoubtedly one of the most important elements of the British economy throughout the medieval period - even the seat occupied by the speaker of the House of lords rests on a woolsack. In The Wealth of England Susan Rose brings together the social, economic and political strands in the development of the wool trade and show how and why it became so important. The author looks at the lives of prominent wool-men; gentry who based their wealth on producing this commodity like the Stonors in the Chilterns, canny middlemen who rose to prominence in the City of London like Nicholas Brembre and Richard (Dick) Whittington, and men who acquired wealth and influence like William de la Pole of Hull. She examines how the wealth made by these and other wool-men transformed the appearance of the leading centres of the trade with magnificent churches and other buildings. The export of wool also gave England links with Italian trading cities at the very time that the Renaissance was transforming cultural life. The complex operation of the trade is also explained with the role of the Staple at Calais to the fore leading to a discussion on the way the policy of English kings, especially in the fourteenth century, was heavily influenced by trade in this one commodity. No other book has treated this subject holistically with its influence on the course of English history made plain. Susan Rose presents a fascinating new exposition on the role of the wool trade in the economy and political history of medieval England. She shows how this simple product created wealth and status among men of hugely varying backgrounds, transformed market towns both economically and in architectural terms and contributed to fundamental social and cultural changes through trading links with Italy and other European countries at the height of the Renaissance

Download or read book Introduction to Medieval Europe 300 1500 written by Wim Blockmans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction to Medieval Europe 300-1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history. Covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianization, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial economy, the growth of cities, the Crusades, the effects of plague, and the intellectual and cultural life of the Middle Ages, the book explores the driving forces behind the formation of medieval society and the directions in which it developed and changed. In doing this, the authors cover a wide geographic expanse, including Western interactions with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World. Now in full colour, this second edition contains a wealth of new features that help to bring this fascinating era to life, including: A detailed timeline of the period, putting key events into context Primary source case boxes Full colour illustrations throughout New improved maps A glossary of terms Annotated suggestions for further reading The book is supported by a free companion website with resources including, for instructors, assignable discussion questions and all of the images and maps in the book available to download, and for students, a comparative interactive timeline of the period and links to useful websites. The website can be found at www.routledge.com/cw/blockmans. Clear and stimulating, the second edition of Introduction to Medieval Europe is the ideal companion to studying Europe in the Middle Ages at undergraduate level.

Download or read book The Economy of Medieval Wales 1067 1536 written by Matthew Frank Stevens and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys the economy of Wales from the first Norman intrusions of 1067 to the Act of Union of England and Wales in 1536. Key themes include the evolution of the agrarian economy; the foundation and growth of towns; the adoption of a money economy; English colonisation and economic exploitation; the collapse of Welsh social structures and rise of economic individualism; the disastrous effect of the Glyndŵr rebellion; and, ultimately, the alignment of the Welsh economy to the English economy. Comprising four chapters, a narrative history is presented of the economic history of Wales, 1067–1536, and the final chapter tests the applicability in a Welsh context of the main theoretical frameworks that have been developed to explain long-term economic and social change in medieval Britain and Europe.

Download or read book Rural Society and Economic Change in County Durham written by A. T. Brown and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2015 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A regional study of landed society in the transition between the late medieval and early modern period.

Download or read book Orsanmichele written by Marie D’Aguanno Ito and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 776 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work provides a new narrative for Orsanmichele in the era before the Renaissance. It examines Orsanmichele from the mid-thirteenth century, as the piazza transformed into the city’s grain market. It considers the market’s tandem confraternity, with its stunning Madonnas over three successive loggias. It examines the grain market and confraternity from a social, economic, political, and artistic perspective. It provides extensive data on the Florentine grain trade, sales at the market, and the nexus between traders, political leaders, and the confraternity. The work suggests that developments at Orsanmichele during the medieval period formed the basis for the Renaissance structure.

Download or read book Crisis and Survival in Late Medieval Ireland written by Brendan Smith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-06-20 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval Ireland is associated in the public imagination with the ruined castles and monasteries that remain prominent in the Irish landscape. Crisis and Survival in Late Medieval Ireland: The English of Louth and their Neighbours, 1330-1450 examines how the society that produced these monuments developed over the course of a turbulent century, focussing particularly on county Louth, situated on the coast north of Dublin and adjacent to the earldom of Ulster. Louth was one of the areas that had been most densely colonised by English settlers in the decades around 1200, and ties with England and loyalty to the English crown remained strong. Its settlers found it possible to maintain close economic and political ties with England in part because of their proximity to the significant trading port of Drogheda, and the residence among them of the archbishop of Armagh, primate of Ireland, also extended their international horizons and contacts. In this volume, Brendan Smith explores the ways in which the English settlers in Louth maintained their English identity in the face of plague and warfare. The Black Death of 1348-9, and recurrent visitations of plague thereafter, reduced their numbers significantly and encouraged the Irish lordships on their borders to challenge their local supremacy. How to counter the threat from the MacMahons, O'Neills, and others, absorbed their energies and resources. It not only involved mounting armed campaigns, taking hostages, and building defences; it also meant intermarrying with these families and entering into numerous solemn, if short-lived, treaties with them. Smith draws on original source material, to present a picture of the English settlers in Louth, and to show how living in the borderlands of the English world coloured every aspect of settler life.

Download or read book Government and Merchant Finance in Anglo Gascon Trade 1300 1500 written by Robert Blackmore and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-22 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Late Middle Ages (c.1300–c.1500) saw the development of many of the key economic institutions of the modern unitary nation-state in Europe. After the ‘commercial revolution’ of the thirteenth century, taxes on trade became increasingly significant contributors to government finances, and as such there were ever greater efforts to control the flow of goods and money. This book presents a case study of the commercial and financial links between the kingdom of England and the duchy of Aquitaine across the late-medieval period, with a special emphasis on the role of the English Plantagenet government that had ruled both in a political union since 1154. It establishes a strong connection between fluctuations in commodity markets, large monetary flows and unstable financial markets, most notably in trade credit and equity partnerships. It shows how the economic relationship deteriorated under the many exogenous shocks of the period, the wars, plagues and famines, as well as politically motivated regulatory intervention. Despite frequent efforts to innovate in response, both merchants and governments experienced a series of protracted financial crises that presaged the break-up of the union of kingdom and duchy in 1453, with the latter’s conquest by the French crown. Of particular interest to scholars of the late-medieval European economy, this book will also appeal to those researching wider economic or financial history.

Download or read book After the Black Death written by Mark Bailey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death of 1348-9 is the most catastrophic event and worst pandemic in recorded history. After the Black Death offers a major reinterpretation of its immediate impact and longer-term consequences in England. After the Black Death reassesses the established scholarship on the impact of plague on fourteenth-century England and draws upon original research into primary sources to offer a major re-interpretation of the subject. It studies how the government reacted to the crisis, and how communities adapted in its wake. It places the pandemic within the wider context of extreme weather and epidemiological events, the institutional framework of markets and serfdom, and the role of law in reducing risks and conditioning behaviour. The government's response to the Black Death is reconsidered in order to cast new light on the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. By 1400, the effects of plague had resulted in major changes to the structure of society and the economy, creating the pre-conditions for England's role in the Little Divergence (whereby economic performance in parts of north western Europe began to move decisively ahead of the rest of the continent). After the Black Death explores in detail how a major pandemic transformed society, and, in doing so, elevates the third quarter of the fourteenth century from a little-understood paradox to a critical period of profound and irreversible change in English and global history.

Download or read book The World of the Newport Medieval Ship written by Evan T. Jones and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2018-05-14 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It explores and interprets one of the most important archaeological discoveries of recent decades. It comprises the most sophisticated and detailed investigation yet undertaken of the maritime world of a particular place and time. It explores the relationship between history and archaeology, assessing how both can contribute to the interpretation of physical remains.

Download or read book A Cultural History of Work in the Medieval Age written by Valerie L. Garver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2020 PROSE Award for Multivolume Reference/Humanities Work was central to medieval life. Religious and secular authorities generally expected almost everyone to work. Artistic and literary depictions underlined work's cultural value. The vast majority of medieval people engaged in agriculture because it was the only way they could obtain food. Yet their work led to innovations in technology and production and allowed others to engage in specialized labor, helping to drive the growth of cities. Many workers moved to seek employment and to improve their living conditions. For those who could not work, charity was often available, and many individuals and institutions provided forms of social welfare. Guilds protected their members and created means for the transmission of skills. When they were not at work, medieval Christians were to meet their religious obligations yet many also enjoyed various pastimes. A consideration of medieval work is therefore one of medieval society in all its creativity and complexity and that is precisely what this volume provides. A Cultural History of Work in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on economies, representations of work, workplaces, work cultures, technology, mobility, society, politics and leisure.

Download or read book Economic Ethics in Late Medieval England 1300 1500 written by Jennifer Hole and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on an array of archival evidence from court records to the poems of Chaucer, this work explores how medieval thinkers understood economic activity, how their ideas were transmitted and the extent to which they were accepted. Moving beyond the impersonal operations of an economy to its ethical dimension, Hole’s socio-cultural study considers not only the ideas and beliefs of theologians and philosophers, but how these influenced assumptions and preoccupations about material concerns in late medieval English society. Beginning with late medieval English writings on economic ethics and its origins, the author illuminates a society which, although strictly hierarchical and unequal, nevertheless fostered expectations that all its members should avoid greed and excess consumption. Throughout, Hole aims to show that economic ethics had a broader application than trade and usury in late medieval England.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds 1400 1800 written by Claire Jowitt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has been nominated for The Mountbatten Award for Best Book in the Maritime Media Awards 2021. The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds, 1400‒1800 explores early modern maritime history, culture, and the current state of the research and approaches taken by experts in the field. Ranging from cartography to poetry and decorative design to naval warfare, the book shows how once-traditional and often Euro-chauvinistic depictions of oceanic ‘mastery’ during the early modern period have been replaced by newer global ideas. This comprehensive volume challenges underlying assumptions by balancing its assessment of the consequences and accomplishments of European navigators in the era of Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan, with an awareness of the sophistication and maritime expertise in Asia, the Arab world, and the Americas. By imparting riveting new stories and global perceptions of maritime history and culture, the contributors provide readers with fresh insights concerning early modern entanglements between humans and the vast, unpredictable ocean. With maritime studies growing and the ocean’s health in decline, this volume is essential reading for academics and students interested in the historicization of the ocean and the ways early modern cultures both conceptualized and utilized seas.

Download or read book Rethinking the Great Transition written by Peter L. Larson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This case study of two rural parishes in County Durham, England, provides an alternate view on the economic development involved in the transition from medieval to modern, partly explaining England's rise to global economic dominance in the seventeenth century. Coal mining did not come to these parishes until the nineteenth century; these are an example of agrarian expansion. Low population, favourable seigniorial administration, and a commercialised society saw the emergence of large farms on the bishopric of Durham soon after the Black Death; these secure copyhold and leasehold tenures were among the earliest known in England. Individualism developed within a strong parish and village community that encouraged growth while enforcing conformity: tenants had freedom to farm as they wished, within limits. Along with low rents, this allowed for a swift expansion of agricultural production in the sixteenth century as population rose and then as the coal trade expanded rapidly. The prosperity of these men is reflected in their lands, livestock, and consumer goods. Yet not all shared in this prosperity, as the poor and landless increased in number simply by population growth. Through reformation and rebellion, these and other parishes prospered without experiencing severe disruption or destruction. In north-eastern England, agrarian development was an evolution and not a revolution. This study shows England's economic development as a single narrative, woven together from a collection of regional experiences at different times and at different speeds.