Medieval Business

[erudito]

Edwin S. Hunt and James M Murray’s A History of Business in Medieval Europe 1200-1550 is an excellent history of medieval business. The business focus gives it an alertness to practicality which is not always a feature of medieval history, even medieval economic history. Having a retired businessman as one of the authors (Hunt, Murray is an

Comments

[claidheamhmor]

That sounds really, really interesting. I must keep an eye out for it. I like your review, BTW.

Thanks

[erudito]

Praise is always good :) And it is a good book.

[jordan179]

The “long boom”, the commercial expansion from 1000 to 1300, was brought to a halt, first by a series of particularly bad famines and then the Black Death, which wreaked havoc on an already weakened Europe.

Also the change from the relatively warm weather of the High Middle Ages to the start of the Little Ice Age, whose cold and wet weather was in part responsible for the famines that weakened European health and set the stage for the Black Death to wreak its havoc: the climatic shift may also have disrupted the lives of the Asian steppe rodents which acted as a plague reservoir.

Correct

[erudito]

Colder is bad, and climate change does explain the outbreak of famines. And, as you say, maybe the Black Death itself.