------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (September 2007)

Lawrin Armstrong, Ivana Elbl, and Martin M. Elbl, editors, _Money, 
Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe: Essays in Honour of John 
H.A. Munro_. Leiden: Brill, 2007. xx + 648 pp. $201 (hardcover), 
ISBN: 978-90-04-15633-3.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Karine van der Beek, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 
Barcelona.


This volume, edited by Lawrin Armstrong, Ivana Elbl, and Martin M. 
Elbl, the first in Brill's peer-reviewed series _Later Medieval 
Europe_, is a Festschrift for the eminent economic historian John 
H.A. Munro on the occasion of his retirement from the University of 
Toronto in 2003. Munro's remarkable academic achievements and 
extraordinary qualities of character are clearly reflected in the 
warm preface by Herman van der Wee, in the introduction by the 
editors, and in the numerous references to him and to his work in the 
various essays.

The essays, which mostly consist of original work, discuss various 
aspects of the late medieval economy. They are divided into seven 
sections -- Money and Ethics, Taxation and Revenue, Expenditure and 
War, Land and Labor, Market Integration, Long-Distance Trade and 
Markets, and Regional and Local Markets -- representing the broad 
range of academic interests embodied in Munro's work (of which the 
volume includes a full bibliography).

The share of studies dealing with fiscal policy is quite surprising. 
The essays can be divided into those focusing on the relationship 
between public finance and public expenditure, the effect of public 
finance on markets, and the effects of public expenditure and war on 
markets. Among the studies that fit in the first category is a paper 
by Jeffrey Fynn-Paul on the introduction of civic debt in the Catalan 
city of Manresa in the 1340s. Although the historical evidence he 
presents is intriguing, the connection he makes between the 
introduction of civic debt and the subsequent civic unrest is not 
very convincing. Other essays in this category are by Susannah C. 
Humble Ferreira, pointing out administrative changes in royal finance 
that allowed a significant expansion of royal households both in 
sixteenth-century England and Portugal, and a captivating paper by 
Kelly De Vries on the effects of warfare finance on war strategies 
and tactics, concentrating on two critical failed Burgundian sieges 
during the Hundred Years War.

The effects of political fragmentation on trade are very well 
demonstrated in two studies. James Masschaele offers an informative 
overview of the tolls levied in medieval England. He suggests that 
although the widespread medieval tolls had the potential to undermine 
trade, "they were prevented from doing so by an effective assertion 
of public authority" provided by the crown, which managed "to 
establish relatively narrow limits within which uncertainty 
fluctuated." This view is further strengthened by Mark Aloisio's 
description of the political mechanisms and regulations that governed 
the fifteenth-century Maltese grain markets, which precluded their 
integration into those of the kingdom of Sicily.

Ivana Elbl's study touches on the question of efficiency of public 
ownership in a fascinating account of the Portuguese African 
enterprise. She offers convincing arguments to prove that the 
enterprise was badly managed, though she does not provide any 
evidence to support her rather odd claim that the Portuguese crown, 
"did not necessarily aim at maximizing revenue, but rather at 
achieving an acceptable and sustainable cash flow." Last within this 
category of fiscal policy, Maryanne Kowaleski, in a delightful essay, 
turns our attention to ways in which the Hundred Years War promoted 
the development of English merchant shipping and port towns, owing 
primarily to privileges and increasing naval activity granted by the 
crown.

Most of the other studies in the book are concerned with the 
operation of local, regional, interregional, and even 
intercontinental late-medieval markets. I found particularly 
intriguing the essays by Martha Carlin and Charlotte Masemann, both 
of whom used very original types of sources. Carlin utilized three 
texts that "used discussions of urban occupations, shops and shopping 
to instruct students in Latin vocabulary and the art of writing 
business letters," to provide a vivid and detailed description of 
street sellers, negotiating techniques, and mainly the variety of 
goods that was available in the markets of thirteenth-century English 
towns and in Paris. Masemann's study combines archaeological 
(botanical) evidence on consumption in L?beck, a northern German 
town, with evidence from written records documenting the city's urban 
gardens to prove that what was grown in these gardens was consumed 
within the city.

Masemann's finding is in line with Richard Unger's work, in which he 
presents data on prices of various grains in southeast England, 
Flanders, Brabant, and Holland (from the late fourteenth century to 
1600) indicating that while urban grain markets within these regions 
were highly integrated in the fifteenth century, their demand seems 
to have been supplied entirely by nearby rural areas, and that this 
tended to limit town size until such time as distant trade became 
less costly. Also concentrating on the Low Countries, David Nicholas 
analyzes the financial role of Ypres in the region during the 
thirteenth century based on debt recognitions contracted before the 
echevins of the city. Francesco Guidi Bruscoli and James Bolton 
summarize the first findings of their notable Borromei Bank Research 
Project -- a micro-study based on two surviving ledgers of the 
family's companies in Bruges and London between 1436 and 1439, which 
adds to our understanding of long-distance exchange operations in 
general and among England, the Low Countries, and Italy in particular.

Ian Blanchard and Martin Elbl both offer detailed pictures of 
late-medieval intercontinental specie market operation. Blanchard 
describes the significant role played by Egypt's crisis in monetary 
and specie markets, which he believes was responsible for two-thirds 
of the rise in gold prices between 1375 and 1425. Elbl focuses on the 
Maghrib, using the abundant Datini records (for the period 
1394-1410), preserved in the Datini archive in Prato, to fill in the 
gap in the literature on the Venetian/Balearic trans-Saharan copper 
trade.

Lawrin Armstrong and Lutz Kaelber deal with the ethical aspect of 
medieval financial markets. Armstrong offers an insightful discussion 
on the tension that existed between canonists and theologians (thus, 
law and ethics) regarding the problem of usury, and Kaelber's essay 
addresses the development of Max Weber's view on usury.

Finally, the volume also includes studies that focus on institutional 
and legal aspects of late-medieval market operation. John Drendel's 
essay argues that personal servitude, which appeared in northern 
Francia during the tenth century, never existed in Provence. 
Francesco Galassi examines the patterns of diffusion of different 
terms in sharecropping contract in Italy to identify the transmission 
mechanism that underlies institutional change. Lastly, Martha Howell 
provides an instructive and comprehensive examination of legal and 
social aspects of property law in late-medieval Ghent, which points 
out the political interests that were at work in the process of 
shaping the law.

To conclude, this Festschrift in honor of the revered John Munro 
contains original and remarkable work, and while I admit that I found 
some of the studies to be more appealing than others, they are all 
characterized by a notable wealth of historical evidence, references, 
and sources. Given the scope of topics and the diversity of 
approaches, the volume should be of great interest to a wide range of 
scholars in diverse fields.


Karine van der Beek is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Universitat Pompeu 
Fabra, Barcelona. Her research focuses on early European growth and 
on the effects of political structures on institutional formation, 
market organization, and productivity. Recent papers include: 
"Political Fragmentation and Technology Adoption: Watermill 
Construction in Feudal France," and, "Political Fragmentation and 
Investment Decisions: The Milling Industry in Feudal France 
(1150-1250)."

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