Andrew Watson – “Free access to the link is available for the month of
December” - This link just recycles me back to the abstract, if anyone can
assist with the full article I would be most grateful.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022050714000904

Andrew Murray Watson is a long time hero of mine, not for this work, but for
his earlier, 1967, classic “Back to Gold, and Silver”.  It chronicles the
huge restructuring of later mediaeval European economic life, as possibly
2,000+ tons of currency - silver - was shipped out of Europe into Islam
around the 13th and 14th centuries.  This silver was exchanged for gold, as
a narrow elite, with Florentine bankers at their head, took control of the
finances of the continent, and handed it to a mistress that William Langland
called ‘Lady Fee’.  

I have long assumed that Watson acted bravely but injudiciously by stating
his conclusion on that event quite so baldly.

Watson (EHR 1967) wrote:

 'Rulers in all parts of Europe were ready to procure the metal needed to
maintain a strong gold currency by sacrificing silver.    They  were 
prepared  to  let  the  common people, who received their income in silver,
bear the burden of keeping intact a prestige coinage for the use of princes
and merchants.'  

Almost alone Watson not only recognised the unpopularity of the centrally
directed move towards the gold florin; he recognised the legitimacy of its
medieval critics.  Major works on this matter appear ever decade or so. 
Watson (1967) was surely criticising Lopez (1956).  Day returned to these
topics (1978), then  Spufford (1988), and recently Sargent and Velde 
(2002).  Seems to me Watson tried to take the bull by the horns, while other
writers side step the issue, waving various Capa, Capote or Muleta at it.

I only know the bare bones behind Watson’s career switch.  He made lead
article in EHR with his 1967 piece as young professor.  But almost
immediately upon its publication he was awarded a Ford Foundation Grant to
change fields, abandon the history of money, and study the history of
agriculture instead.  Toronto then hired John Munro to handle the monetary
history brief.  As a pupil of Miskimin (and Lopez too I think?) perhaps John
might have been expected to toe a more orthodox line?  But this did not turn
out to be the case.  John died 12 months back, but Toronto is to be
congratulated on keeping his vast body of work, in free access, on the web.  

http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/wwwfiles/archives/munro5

Late in the day, at Utrecht, John turned his attention to Sargent and Velde
and spoke just as clearly as Andrew Watson once had

http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/index.php/index/research/workingPaperDetails/456

Rob Tye

https://www.academia.edu/3556314