HIST 622A The Early Medieval Economy
The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne's vision of a Roman economy which persisted until the seventh century, a collapse predicated on the rise of Islam, Carolingian economic stagnation, and finally an economic resurgence in Northern Europe with the birth of the medieval town dominated the teaching of medieval economic history for decades. Recent work has demonstrated that this explanatory framework cannot account for the evidence revealed by new historical and archaeological research. Yet, the kinds of questions Pirenne asked still offer insight into how we can best understand the economic history of the early Middle Ages. This course will begin by studying Pirenne's classic economic works, before moving on to consider how scholars today (including Wickham, McCormick, and Hodges and Whitehouse) have built on and transformed Pirenne's views. We will read accounts of the economy by modern scholars, as well as archaeological reports on recent discoveries which have enriched our view of this period and primary sources which, when investigated carefully, can tell us something about the early medieval economic world. The course will aim to illuminate how the economy recovered from late antique turmoil to provide the foundations for Europe's subsequent economic strength.