Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300 - 900 [Hardcover]

Michael McCormick (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521661021 | ISBN-13: 978-0521661027 | Publication Date: February 11, 2002

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the economic transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages in over sixty years. It brings fresh evidence to bear on the fall of the Roman empire and the origins of the medieval economy. The book uses new material from recent excavations, and develops a new method for the study of hundreds of travelers to reconstitute the communications infrastructure that conveyed those travelers--ship sailings, overland routes--linking Europe to Africa and Asia, from the time of the later Roman empire to the reign of Charlemagne and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...an erudite corpus of information, this book is impressive..." SPECULUM

"One of the most appealing aspects of the book is McCormick's diffidence. He marshals enormous collections of evidence, makes insightful deductions....No serious academic library supporing upper level history research can be without this outstanding, if 'provisional,' survey of a topic which is now more clear to us." Catholic Library World

"McCormick has produced a large and ambitious work whose substantive objective is to establish that travel and trade developed significanlty earlier in Europe...than some medival historians have been prepared to believe... The book is...important, addressing as it does a difficult period in economic history....Recommended for academic and research collections, upper-division undergraduate through faculty." Choice

"McCormick has written a Decline and Fall for the twenty-first century. This big book...should transform our view of pre-modern history and the ways in which it may be studied....his brilliant book will shatter most people's conceptions of the Dark Ages." The Times Literary Supplement

"The book is rich with practical details of early medieval travel, the storms, fevers, delays, miracles and pirates...Unlike some of his European counterparts amongst historians, McCormick is also archaelogically literate, recognizing the huge advances of the last thirty years, but accurately hitting upon many of the remaining lacunae, both in Mediterranean urban archaelogy and in northern Europe...The maps are consistent, clear and accurate...strategy, endurance, organization and resources win wars. McCormick has all of these things, and this is indeed a monumental and inspiring achievement. Cambridge University Press is to be congratulated on a polished and well-edited production." EH.NET

"An awesome book... The results are little short of extraordinary. McCormick has established a benchmark for what, as he rightly points out, has been a virtual world lost between those studying East and West, and North and South. Time will show what a massively useful work this is." Agrarian History Review

"Indisputably a monumental study." International Journal of Maritime History

"McCormick's book is a masterpiece of craft ... McCormick, like Bloch and Pirenne, is writing a different kind of economic history: 'economic history as cultural history' ... McCormick has carried the best work of the early twentieth century on into the twenty-first - not just by adding more lanes, but by carving out a whole new route." The New Republic

Book Description

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the economic transition during this period for over sixty years, bringing fresh evidence to bear on the fall of the Roman empire and the origins of the medieval economy. The book uses new material from recent excavations, and develops a new method for the study of hundreds of travellers to reconstitute the communications infrastructure that conveyed those travellers--ship sailings, overland routes--linking Europe to Africa and Asia, from the time of the later Roman empire to the reign of Charlemagne and beyond.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1130 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (February 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521661021
• ISBN-13: 978-0521661027
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.3 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #781,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most brilliant work of medieval scholarship in years!, December 9, 2003

By 

Glenn McDorman (Denver) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300 - 900 (Hardcover)

First, before you proceed any further with this book, you ought to know that it is not abou the origins of the European economy. If you are looking for a book about economic life and change in Europe between 300 and 900, this is not really the book for you. McCormick's book is specifically about trade, and largely "international" trade, between these years.

Having said that, McCormick's book is the most brilliant work on medieval history in years. He sets out to examine the patterns of Mediterranean commerce during the early middle ages, focusing on different aspects of the Pirenne thesis. This, of course, has been done repeatedly over the eight decades since Pirenne's famous publications, but McCormick's approach is startlingly new. Rather than simply argue over the same tired scraps of evidence, McCormick works hard to incorporate old, non-economic, data into his argument, and also brings in entirely new evidence. To begin with, McCormick focuses on the accounts of non-commercial travellers -- pilgrims, envoys, missionaries, etc. -- to see how they travelled, when they travelled, and whom they travelled with. By looking at these accounts McCormick puts together a picture of frequent Mediterranean travel, demonstrates the frequency of specific routes, and, the interaction of travelling merchants and other travellers. McCormick uses these accounts as evidence of a vibrant shipping network in the Mediterranean in the eight and ninth centuries. He then backs this inferrence up with "hard" data from recent undersea archaeology, numismatics, and the study of relic hordes.

In the end, McCormick discusses the export of Europeans as slaves to the Caliphate, and, to a limited extenct, Byzantium. McCormick's final argument is that this slave trade was massive, and provided the fuel for the growth of European commerce, growth that was sustained even after the decline of the slave trade.

When all is said and done, McCormick's book is amazing. His arguments and evidence are controversial, and it is easy to predict that this book will be the focal point for scholarly debate for the next generation. Well written, engrossing, and thought provoking, this book is a must for anyone interested in medieval studies or good scholarly debate. The beuatiful maps, charts, and graphs, and the detailed accounts of travellers in the appendices simply add to the value of this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Resurrecting Rome's Fall: the view from the early 21st century, February 19, 2007

By 

Arnold Lelis (Stevens Point WI USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300 - 900 (Hardcover)

No one who is seriously interested in the transition from the Roman Empire to the Early Medieval West should pass up the opportunity to own this volume--in hardcover!--for only $52. Michael McCormick analyses the economic transformation of the Mediterranean world ca. A.D. 300 - 900. In doing so, he presents a nearly compendious wealth of data (including a vast and multi-faceted bibliography) on various aspects of the question.

"Origins of the European Economy" joins works by Chris Wickham, Charles McClendon, and Peter Heather (among others of like quality) that re-analyze questions concerning the fall of Rome and the rise of Latin Christendom from various angles, including the economic, architectural, and military-political. In this first decade of the 21st century, the old debates between the catastrophist and continuist views on the Roman-Medieval transition are being informed by a fresh influx of data and analysis. The new studies, including "Origins of the European Economy," promise to bring about a quantum step-up in our understanding of this ancient issue.

Arnold Lelis

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book on early European Economy, July 18, 2008

By 

John E. Mack (New London, Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300 - 900 (Hardcover)

This is a genuinely great book. It it basically an economic history of the Mediterranean regions of Western Europe from the last centuries of the Roman Empire to the time when the Roman traces of Western Europe had all but vanished. The author make the intriguing claim that the economic "collapse" of the Southern part of what had been Rome's Western provinces did not decline as much as many historians believed (though it was still very bad) and, more importantly, began their recovery far earlier than is usually credited. The book follows methods made justly famous by, say, Pirene and Braudel, and relies heavily on archeology. But the author goes beyond his model to focus on the accounts of merchants, churchmen and other travelers to demonstrate what the world of the Southern dark ages seemed like to its more literate denizens. The author is particularly enlightening (and, to me, original) in pointing out the pivotal role of the slave trade with Islam in laying the foundations of European recovery and preventing overpopulation in a time of economic contraction. In the end, the author comes to the intriguing and well-founded claim that it was the Islamic Caliphate which played the decisive role in forcing Europe down the path to a modern economy. The book is magnificently researched and magisterially written. I know -- I gush. But this is a great book.