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Discussion of Miskimin paper
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011
Extract
This paper is the latest contribution to the now considerable literature dealing with the putative depression in the later middle ages. In particular, Harry Miskimin's present monetary analysis is an extension of the recent exchange in the pages of the Economic History Review, involving him and his colleague, Robert Lopez, and their dissentient, Carlo Cipolla. The striking characteristic of this stimulating reconstruction is the reconciliation of some of the seemingly inconsistent or dissonant data adduced by previous writers. While every effort to clarify the operative factors and to establish cause and effect relationships in this disputed subject of Renaissance economic patterns is gratefully received, and while I personally am inclined toward the “depressionist” or at least “stagnationist” position in the current controversy, I am regretfully not entirely satisfied with the argument of this paper. My unease can be explained in part and, I would hope, will be communicated, by a few observations relating to the graphs which illustrate the text.
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References
1 For general background to the controversy, see Ferguson, Wallace K., “Recent Trends in the Economic Historiography of the Renaissance,” Studies in the Renaissance, VII (1960), 7–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Lopez, R. S. and Miskimin, H. A., “The Economic Depression of the Renaissance,” The Economic History Review, XIV, No. 3 (Apr. 1962), 408–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carlo M. Cipolla, R. S. Lopez, and H. A. Miskimin, “Economic Depression of the Renaissance?,” ibid., XVI, No. 3 (Apr. 1964), 519–529.
3 See tables in Ruding, R., Annals of the Coinage of Britain and Its Dependencies (3d ed.; London, 1840), I, 84–85Google Scholar. On the matter of gold coinage and circulation, I gratefully acknowledge use of unpublished results of research by John McGovern of Loyola College (Montreal).
4 Cipolla, in the article cited (p. 524), notes that this aspect of the question is curiously neglected by medievalists.
5 For example, van Bath, B. H. Slicher, The Agrarian History of Western Europe A. D. 500–1850, tr. Ordish, Olive (London: Edward Arnold, Ltd., 1963), 137–144.Google Scholar
6 For comment on the term, see Lopez, R. S., “The Trade of Medieval Europe: The South,” The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, II, ed. Postan, M. and Rich, E. E. (Cambridge [Engl.]: University Press, 1952), 338.Google Scholar
7 In northern Europe, for example. Lönnroth, Compare E., “The Economic Policies of Governments: The Baltic Countries,” Cambridge Economic History, III (1963), 362–63.Google Scholar
8 For a recent attempt, see Bridbury, A. R., Economic Growth: England in the Later Middle Ages (London: Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1962)Google Scholar.