History of Business in Medieval Europe 1200-1550 Book

This book traces the course of business, which the authors define as commercial exchange. They argued that high medieval business was driven by the demands of the elite and that this permitted the idea of gain for its own value, and the authors use this idea to criticize Weber’s failure to identify a capitalist ethos before the Reformation. Italy and Flanders receive the bulk of the attention, with a central chapter devoted to the Florentine super-companies of the fourteenth century. These organizations display a large degree of sophistication and some degree of permanence, and in this sense serve as the medieval equivalent to the modern multi-national corporation. With the Black Death comes a break, but not a sharp one. Increasingly bureaucratized governments that were frequently at war present new problems but also new opportunities, and rising wages also mean rising consumer markets despite demographic decline. However, the authors stress that the skills and techniques of business developed in the high middle ages persisted, and that thus the transition from late medieval to early modern business is so smooth as to be nearly invisible.