Economy and Society in an Earlier America

1987 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-319
Author(s):  
Stuart Bruchey
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
American History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Vertical Mobility

I suggest here that change in a number of social variables, including values, vertical mobility, political and social power, technology and law, appear to be associated with economic growth or decline and that the study of economic history would be enriched by investigations of the nature and timing of those linkages. Illustrative models of the linkages are drawn for the early Middle Ages in Western Europe and for the colonial and antebellum periods of American history.

The Role of Comparison in the Development of Economic Theory

1957 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 554-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia L. Thrupp
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Development Of Economic Theory

Our conference today on comparative economic history is in some clanger of rushing into the wide-open spaces of ambiguity, for the term is new, and to agree too quickly on its meaning and implications may not even be desirable. In order to avoid engaging in a mere game of definitions, this paper will deal first with three general types of comparison in relation to their bearing on problems of evidence. It will then review some of the chief uses to which these types of comparison have been put in building up our body of knowledge about Western economic history. The survey will close with particular reference to our own preindustrial stages of economic growth, when western Europe was, in our uncomplimentary phrase, an underdeveloped or backward area.

Economic Life in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain, 1085–1815

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilario Casado Alonso ◽  
Teofilo F. Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Spanish Economy ◽  
Late Medieval

The period between 1085 to 1815 witnessed important transformations in Spain’s economic history. The transition from a frontier society to one of the largest empires in the world was soon followed by its subsequent decline. During Spain’s Middle Ages two kinds of economies, societies and political structures, existed side by side: One represented by the various Muslim kingdoms and another by the Christians. Their frontiers shifted constantly between 1035 and 1212 to the detriment of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), concluding with the conquest of Granada in 1492. Economic dynamism resulted in Christian expansion, reflected in demographic, agricultural, livestock, and commercial growth during the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries and comparable to that of other medieval kingdoms. Under the stress of the mid-14th-century crisis (plagues, wars, and civil conflicts), economic growth came to a partial halt in the second half of the century. Yet, unlike other areas in Europe, the late medieval crisis had less of an impact in Spain, differently affecting some of the Iberian realms. After the second third of the 15th century, as it was the case in Portugal, the economy in the Crown of Castile began to grow once more. Castile became the demographic and economic hub of Spain to the detriment of other areas, such as Catalonia, Navarra, or Aragón, which had been more developed in earlier times. The Catholic Monarchs’ rule and their reforms made Spain one of the most prosperous economies in Europe and the center of a sprawling empire. The colonisation of the Americas and the Philippines with their untold wealth further bolstered Spain’s economy. As a result, most researchers agree that Spain reached the height of its economic growth in the mid-16th century, although in a number of regions growth extended into the 1580s. Based mostly in agriculture, the economy also benefitted from the development of crafts and, above all, trade, generating vast tax revenue for the Habsburg monarchy’s expansive policy of war. After the late 16th century, however, the Spanish economy began to show signs of fatigue, leading to severe crisis that lasted until at least the mid-17th century. This recession heralded a major shift in Spain’s history. Whereas it was the inland areas of Spain that were the most populated and wealthy during the 12th and 13th centuries, these areas were also most affected by the crisis, while the coastal regions would be the first to emerge from the recession. Although Spain failed to reach the heights attained in other countries such as Britain, France, or the Netherlands, an economic revival occurred during the 18th century, moving the Spanish economy beyond what it had been during the final third of the 16th century. Nonetheless, as had occurred in the 17th century, coastal areas developed more intensely than inland, leading to the economic geography of modern-day Spain.

The Mission to Constantinople in 968 and Liudprand of Cremona

Traditio ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 55-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon N. Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Detailed Record ◽  
East West

Of the documents that concern the relationship between Byzantium and Western Europe in the early Middle Ages, none is more famous or more frequently read than Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana, Liudprand of Cremona's description of his mission to Constantinople in 968 for Otto I. Much has been learned from his vivid if acid narrative about the Byzantine court of Nicephorus II Phocas and about East-West relations in the tenth century. Over the last forty years research has reached beneath the vivid prose in search of the true significance of that mission. But since Liudprand's is the only first-hand, detailed record of an embassy to Constantinople of that era, some scholars have given it more contemporary importance than it actually had, and, by extension, they have turned Liudprand's thoughts into subtle expressions of official Western policy. The danger in these inquiries has been to divorce the mind and moods of the creator from his creation and bestow on Relatio undeserved exaltation. The problem is to keep the document in its perspective while draining every sentence of its implications.

Educated Wandering Jews, 800–1250

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Business Opportunities ◽  
Vast Territory

This chapter shows that once the Jews became literate, urban, and engaged in skilled occupations, they began migrating within the vast territory under Muslim rule—stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to India during the eighth through the twelfth centuries, and from the Byzantine Empire to western Europe via Italy and within western Europe in the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. In early medieval Europe, the revival of trade concomitant with the Commercial Revolution and the growth of an urban and commercial economy paralleled the vast urbanization and the growth of trade that had occurred in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates four to five centuries earlier. The Jewish diaspora during the early Middle Ages was mainly the outcome of literate Jewish craftsmen, shopkeepers, traders, scholars, teachers, physicians, and moneylenders migrating in search of business opportunities to reap returns on their investment in literacy and education.

Charlemagne, the Carolingian Empire, and Its Successors

2021 ◽  
pp. 468-498
Author(s):  
Rosamond McKitterick
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Western World ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Carolingian Empire ◽  
Political Units

Both the Christian empire of Charlemagne and the subsequently hugely influential imperial ideology of the early Middle Ages were rooted in the Roman past. This chapter addresses the reality of the early medieval empire and the ways in which it was represented by contemporaries for posterity. It examines the career of Pippin III, the first king of the Carolingian dynasty, and the expansion of the Carolingian Empire under his illustrious son Charlemagne, by both design and chance, to embrace most of western Europe. This vast realm was governed by an elaborate and efficient political and administrative system in which both lay and ecclesiastical magnates played a crucial role. This system of governance was maintained even within the smaller political units of the later ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. The Latin Christian culture initially promoted by Charlemagne, moreover, is the most enduring legacy of the medieval empire to the Western world.

Envoi

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
Political Units

The significance of material culture, and the portable objects that are part of it, is dictated by people’s economic and social power, and their need to give physical expression to their status and aspirations. As in any society, the ability and wish to acquire, display, and use metals, glass, gems, or pots depended in the Middle Ages upon the supply of raw materials and finished products, and the demand that their availability might meet or create. The island of Britain had never been united by the Romans, and different reactions to their army’s withdrawal were only to be expected. Generally, however, power-seeking leaders establishing petty and impermanent fiefdoms relied largely upon being able to demonstrate their success by the acquisition of booty that could be profligately consumed, shown off, or distributed to families and supporters. Swords, brooches, or drinking-vessels symbolize how these social affinities were created and maintained, whether recorded in graves, hoards, and other deliberate deposits, or in accidental loss or intentional jettisoning of what was beyond reuse. The precise meanings that were given to gold and silver, glass and garnets, changed according to their contexts; some gave physical expression to an ambition to inherit the prestigious authority of Rome, others gave credence to stories of descent from far-travelling heroes, while others stressed a person’s place within their own immediate society. Yet artefacts such as pottery show that even people whose priority was subsistence were part of a wider network of contact. External factors influenced behaviour: no leader of a group in Britain could negotiate directly with the Byzantine emperor for the subsidies that brought gold into western Europe, so none could take action to ensure its continuing availability during the seventh century. Its relative value changed as it became rarer, so that it had to be used sparingly if at all; consequently, for some people the display of access to it became even more important. Contemporaneously, however, Christianity’s infiltration changed beliefs about what happened after death, and how people should use and dispose of their worldly goods. In bigger political units, using symbols to show origins and allegiances mattered less, but the large numbers of artefacts now known show that prosperity was not confined in the eighth and ninth centuries to the royal families.

Italy and the Economic Development of England in the Middle Ages

1951 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. M. Postan
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Logical Validity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Fundamental Forces ◽  
Economic Leadership ◽  
The Middle Ages

I was asked to illustrate the effects of the economic leadership of adAvanced nations by an example drawn from English economic history in the Middle Ages. I have accordingly chosen the subject of Italian contribution to the economic development of medieval England. What prompted this choice was not only the contribution that the Italians in fact made but also the contribution that they are reputed to have made. Indeed their reputation for economic leadership interests me as much as their achievement. For if their reputation and their achievement are collated, something more interesting than a mere illustration of economic leadership may emerge. The illustration may well turn into a cautionary example. I hope I shall not appear immodest or perverse if I suggest that the Italian example may help to circumscribe the historical and the logical validity of the entire concept of economic leadership. For the concept that appears to mean something in historical accounts of economic forms is apt to dissolve as soon as we reach out to the fundamental forces and processes of economic growth.

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