Monday, June 14, 2021

McCormick, Wickham and early medieval economics

Back in the 1990s, I thought I might write a textbook on medieval history. In preparation for this I bought two rather new books, Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages and Michael McCormick's Origins of the European Economy. Well, neither book got read until 2021. Finally I have prioitized them and though I don't think I will be writing the textbook, I have come to a new understanding of the Crusades, which is very satisfying. It can be summed up in the question, how different were the Normans from the Bulgars in the period around 1000? I think they were very similar. If we in the European West did not have a prejudice that tells us that Bulgaria is not very important but Normandy is, we would have a quite different point of view of Eastern Europe. More later.

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