The Donkey and the Boat

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other.Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based ona completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions andrestricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought. This is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the firstcomprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in the medieval Mediterranean. It also offers arethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.

Genuinely field-changing Hannah Skoda, Books of the Year 2023, BBC History Magazine
An impressive book that turns the history of the Mediterranean upside down...an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging reinterpretation of the Mediterranean...a monumental achievement that fully deserves to take its place among classic studies of Mediterranean history. David Abulafia, Times Literary Supplement
A comprehensive and ground-breaking study...well-researched, well-written, and thought-provoking... an essential reading for anyone interested in Mediterranean history or the development of the European economy. Richard Tuttle, World History Encyclopedia
Nothing short of impressive...a must read Tobias Daniels, Sehepunkte
Punchy, eye-wateringly ambitious, and occasionally amusing, The Donkey & The Boat will set the benchmark for debate on this subject for many years to come. Nicholas Morton, Engelsberg Ideas
Brilliant... the sheer depth of [Wickham's] research and the breadth of his insights warrants close attention. Nicholas Morton, Books of the Year 2023, Engelsberg Ideas
This book is going to become a game changer and an unavoidable point of reference and discussion in the research on medieval economic growth in the next years. Davide Cristoferi, Continuity and Change
It is not every day that one encounters a book that aims to overturn a paradigm and establish in its place the foundations of a new one; rarer still is it to find that the author succeeds in that task. But that is exactly what Chris Wickham achieves in his mammoth new book. Robert Portass, World Archaeology

Chris Wickham taught at Birmingham for nearly thirty years before moving to Oxford as Chichele Professor in 2005. He was Head of Department from 2009 to 2012, and Head of the Humanities Division in 2015 and 2016. He returned to Birmingham as pasrt-time Professor of Medieval History from 2016 until his retirement in 2021. He was Director of the British School at Rome in 2020-2021.

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other.Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions and restricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought. This is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the first comprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in themedieval Mediterranean. It also offers a rethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.

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