Several good general histories of the European economy during the central Middle Ages are available. A fundamental work remains M. M. Postan et al., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, i. The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1966); ii. Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1987); iii. Economic Organization and Policies in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1965). Each volume contains excellent bibliographies.
The best treatment of the medieval economy in a single volume is Norman J. G. Pounds, An Economic History of Europe (2nd edn., London, 1994). Also useful are Carlo M. Cipolla (ed.), The Middle Ages (The Fontana Economic History of Europe; London, n. d.); R. H. Bautier, The Economic Development of Medieval Europe (New York, 1971); and Guy Fourquin, Histoire economique de l’Occident medieval (Paris, 1969). The older accounts of M. M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain 1000-1500 (London, 1972), Gino Luzzatto, An Economic History of Italy from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1961), and J. A. Van Houtte, An Economic History of the Low Countries, 800-1800 (London, 1977) are regionally focused and remain valuable. Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Century (Ithaca, NY, 1974), bridges the chronological divide between this volume and its predecessor.
For the population curve, see J. C. Russell, ‘Population in Europe 500-1500’, in Cipolla, The Middle Ages, 25-70; J. C. Russell, Late Ancient and Medieval Population (Philadelphia, 1958); and more generally Carlo M. Cipolla, The Economic History of World Population (Harmondsworth, 1969). For studies incorporating more recent literature, see Pounds, Economic History, 125-63. Although countless local studies have questioned Russell’s figures, his remains the only synthesis in English.
For more specialized work on the agrarian economy, see Georges Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West (Columbia, SC, 1968); Werner Rosener, Peasants in the Middle Ages (Urbana, 1992); J. Z. Titow, English Rural Society, 1200-1350 (London, 1969); Lynn White Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962); J. Z. Titow, Winchester Yields: A Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity (Cambridge, 1972); and B. H. Slicher Van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A. D. 500-1850 (London, 1963).
On the towns and the commercial and urban economies, see in general David Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (London, 1997), with bibliography; also Adriaan Verhulst, The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe (Cambridge, 1999); Andre Chedeville, Jacques Le Goff, and Jacques Rossiaud (eds.), La Ville en France au Moyen Age, des Carolingiens a la Renaissance (Histoire de la France Urbaine, ed. G. Duby, vol. II; Paris, 1980); Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000-1700 (2nd edn., New York, 1980); and Jacques Rossiaud, ‘The City-Dweller and Life in Cities and Towns’, in Jacques Le Goff (ed.), The Medieval World (London, 1990), 138-179. Numerous treatments on individual city economies have been published; see particularly Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973); and David Herlihy, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia (New Haven, 1967) and Pisa in the Early Renaissance: A Study of Urban Growth (New Haven, 1958).
On the growth of trade and commerce, see Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350 (Cambridge, 1976); Kathryn L. Reyerson, ‘Commerce and Communications’, NCMH v, 50-70; and Jean Favier, Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages (New York, 1998). Richard H. Britnell, The Commercialization of English Society, 1000-1500 (2nd edn., Manchester, 1996), and James Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets: Inland Trade in England, 1150-1350 (New York, 1997), are valuable in illustrating the extent to which commercial relations penetrated the agrarian economy.
For commercial techniques, see Edwin S. Hunt and James M. Murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550 (Cambridge, 1999), and Thomas Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, MA, 1967). On the Hanse, see Philippe Dollinger, The German Hansa (Stanford, 1970). The essays in The Dawn of
Modern Banking (New Haven, 1979) have much of value. Two superb collections of documents remain Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, ed. Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, rev. O. R. Constable (New York, 2001), and A Source Book for Medieval Economic History, ed. Roy C. Cave and Herbert H. Coulson (New York, 1936).
The monetary revolution has received excellent treatment in Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988). On the fairs, see Elizabeth Chapin, Les Villes de foires de Champagne des origins au debut du XlVe siecle (Paris, 1937); Rosalind K. Berlow, ‘The Development of Business Techniques Used at the Fairs of Champagne from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 8 (1971), 3-32; Peter Johanek and Heinz Stoob (eds.), Europaische Messen und Marktesysteme in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, (Cologne,
1996); and Ellen Wedemeyer Moore, The Fairs of England: An Introductory Survey (Toronto, 1985).
World History
