Stephan R. Epstein

Craft Guilds in the Pre-Modern Economy: A Discussion

This article challenges the view, voiced especially by S. Ogilvie, that the revisionist interpretation of the history of craft guilds is wide of the mark. The paper suggests that Ogilvie oversimplifies the revisionist position; ignores significant new work on European crafts; as a result underestimates the role of the guilds in England and the Low Countries; and incorrectly presents her own case study of the Württemberg worsted industry as typical of European industry in general. Rather than a return to what amounts to a generalized eighteenth-century debunking of the guilds, the paper pleads for more quantitative and regionally specified investigations of the economic contributions of craft guilds.

An island for itself : economic development and social change in late medieval Sicily

This study of late medieval Sicily develops a critique of theories of dependence through trade, and a new interpretation of the late medieval economy. It thus addresses current debates on the origins of modern Italian economic dualism, and on the transition from feudalism to capitalism in early modern Europe. Dr Epstein argues that economic development during this period was shaped largely by regional political and institutional structures which regulated access to markets. Following the Black Death, many institutional and social constraints on commercialization were relaxed throughout western Europe as a result of social conflict and demographic change. Peasants became more commercialized; economic growth occurred through regional integration and specialization. The Sicilian economy also expanded and became increasingly export-oriented. although only a small proportion of its output was shipped abroad before 1500. Late medieval Sicily is thus shown to have been neither underdeveloped nor dependent on foreign manufactures and trade.

Transferring technical knowledge and innovating in Europe, c.1200-c.1800

The role of technology in the transition from premodern to modern economies in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe is among the major questions in economic history, but it is still poorly understood. A plausible explanation of premodern European technological development must account for why Europe industrialised in advance of the great Asian civilisations, despite still being a comparative backwater in the twelfth century. What appears to set Western Europe apart is not that technological progress occurred at a faster rate than elsewhere, but that progress was more persistent and uninterrupted. The technical knowledge of premodern craftsmen and engineers was largely experience-based; thus, virtually all premodern technical knowledge was, and had to be, transferred in the flesh. However, the implications for premodern economic history of the basic cognitive limitations to how technical knowledge can be expressed, processed, and transmitted have yet to be examined in any detail. This paper asks how premodern European societies were able to generate incremental technical innovation under three headings: How was premodern technical knowledge stored to avoid loss? How were tacit, visual, verbal, and written means of transmission used heuristically? How was established and new knowledge transmitted?

The textile industry and the foreign cloth trade in late medieval Sicily (1300–1500): a “colonial relationship”?

Abstract Historians have recently argued that by the late Middle Ages a number of Mediterranean economies, notably southern Italy and parts of Spain, stood in a “colonial” relationship vis-a-vis other Mediterranean or northern European regions. For Sicily it has been argued that its economy was based on the exchange of agricultural products, principally grain, for imported manufactures, mainly textiles. Sicilian cloth manufactures were too weak to withstand foreign competition, which created an unbalanced and externally dependent structure of exchange and radically curtailed any chance of autochthonous economic development. This article discusses the empirical evidence upholding these statements about Sicilian textile manufactures. It includes an evaluation of the proportion of foreign imports to local production and consumption, of the socially distinct markets to which foreign and local manufactures catered, and of the nature, quality and extent of local production; the discussion is set in the context of the economic and social transformations taking place in Europe after 1350. The final part briefly analyses the institutional structures and constraints peculiar to Sicilian manufacture, such as the relationship between city and countryside and the apparent lack of any craft organizations. In the light of the extensive evidence for textile manufactures, the author concludes that the empirical basis for the argument that Sicily had a “colonial” dependence on cloth imports is insufficient, that local manufacture was quite capable of withstanding foreign competition of comparable quality, and that the explanation for Sicilys economic development in the late medieval and modern periods must be sought in its own social structures and in the result of the conflicts that arose within them.

Rodney Hilton, Marxism and the transition from feudalism to capitalism

An eminent medievalist and one of the most influential of the small band of Marxist historians working in the UK before 1968, Rodney Hilton’s work on the development of the English feudal system into industrial capitalism was, despite its renown, ultimately mistaken. The problems with Hilton’s account were largely inherited from Maurice Dobb, whose interpretation of Marxist theory led him to exaggerate the role of class struggle to the exclusion of other factors. These assumptions about the importance of class struggle in the transition from feudalism to capitalism were carried over from Dobb’s early work to the work of Hilton and the Marxist historians who followed him. Dobb’s account was predicated upon the inevitable failure of feudalism – an assumption that failed to explain the preceding five-hundred years of success and expansion. This paper looks at how Dobb’s revised understanding of the role of markets in socialist economies subsequently filtered through to Hilton’s reassessment of markets under feudalism, identifies the flaws in the analysis Dobb offered, and traces how these assumptions were carried through to the work of Hilton, before finally offering an alternate diagnosis of the “feudal crises” of the Marxist canon in terms of technical innovation.”

Constitutions, liberties, and growth in pre-modern Europe

Economic historians are generally diffident towards cultural explanations of economic phenomena. This attitude stems partly from the lack of any obvious progress in linking symbolic, cultural meanings to economic practice since Aristotle condemned the social consequences of market exchange (exchange for profit) in the 4th century B.C.E.,1 and partly from methodological concerns. Two questions in particular arise with respect to cultural explanations of economic behaviour. The first is connected with the fact that beliefs can only be apprehended at second hand; the second has to do with the difficulty in identifying the causal links between cultural and economic practices in ways that are not tautological.

Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900-1500.

Preface 1. The market at the edge of the west 2. Al-Andalus within the European network: geography, routes, and communications before the thirteenth century 3. The merchant profession in Muslim Spain and the medieval Mediterranean 4. The merchants in Andalusi trade 5. Merchant business and Andalusi government authority 6. Commodities and patterns of trade in the medieval Mediterranean world 7. Andalusi exports before 1212 8. Continuities and changes in Iberian exports after 1212 9. Spain, northern Europe, and the Mediterranean in the late middle ages Bibliography.

The Medieval Super-Companies: A Study of the Peruzzi Company of Florence.

List of tables Map of the Peruzzi network, 1335 Introduction Part I. Anatomy of the Super-Company: 1. The company and the family 2. The nature of the business 3. The structure of the Peruzzi Company 4. The accounting of the Peruzzi Company Part II. History of the Peruzzi Company from its Reorganization in 1300: 5. The prosperous years 1300-24 6. The decline begins 1325-35 7. The critical years 1335-40 8. The collapse 1340-43 9. The aftermath Conclusions Bibliography Appendices.