Origins of the European Economy
Communications and Commerce AD 300–900

A comprehensive analysis of economic transition between the later Roman empire and Charlemagne's reigne.

Michael McCormick (Author)

9780521661027, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 January 2002

1130 pages, 39 maps
24.6 x 17.8 x 6.6 cm, 2 kg

'McCormick's book is a masterpiece of craft … McCormick, like Bloch and Pirenne, is writing a different kind of economic history: 'economic history as cultural history' … McCormick has carried the best work of the early twentieth century on into the twenty-first - not just by adding more lanes, but by carving out a whole new route.' New Republic

For fifty years debate has raged about early European commerce during the period between antiquity and the middle ages. Was there trade? If so, in what - and with whom? New evidence and new ways of looking at old evidence are now breaking the stalemate. Analysis of communications - the movements of people, ideas and things - is transforming our vision of Europe and the Mediterranean in the age of Charlemagne and Harun al Rashid. This is the first comprehensive analysis of the economic transition during this period for over sixty years. Using new materials and new methodology, it will attract all social and economic historians of antiquity and the middle ages, and anyone concerned with the origins of Europe, the history of the slave trade, medicine and disease, cross-cultural contacts, and the Muslim and Byzantine worlds.

Commerce, communications and the origins of the European economy
Part I. The End of the World: 1. The end of the ancient world
2. Late Roman industry: case studies in decline
3. Land and river communications in late antiquity
4. Sea change in late antiquity
The end of the ancient economy: a provisional balance sheet
Part II. People on the Move
5. A few western faces
6. Two hundred more envoys and pilgrims: group portrait
7. Byzantine faces
8. Easterners heading west: group portrait
9. Traders, slaves, and exiles
People on the move
Part III. Things that Travelled: 10. Hagiographical horizons: collecting exotic relics in early medieval France
11. 'Virtual' coins and communications
12. 'Real money': Arab and Byzantine coins around Carolingian Europe
Things on the move
Part IV. The Patterns of Change: 13. The experience of travel
14. Secular rhythms: communications over time
15. Seasonal rhythms
16. Time under way
17. 'Spaces of sea': Europe's western Mediterranean communications
18. Venetian breakthrough: Europe's central Mediterranean communications
19. New overland routes
The patterns of change
Part V. Commerce: 20. Early medieval trading worlds
21. Where are the merchants?: Italy
22. Merchants and markets of Frankland
23. Connections
24. Where are the wares?: eastern imports to Europe
25. European exports to Africa and Asia
At the origins of the European economy
Appendices
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Archaeology [HD], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD]