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Local enterprise, institutional quality and strategic location were
of central importance in the growth of medieval towns. This book,
comprising a study of 112 English towns, emphasises these key
factors. Downstream locations on major rivers attracted
international trade, and thereby stimulated the local processing of
imports and exports, while the early establishment of richly
endowed religious institutions funnelled agricultural rental income
into a town, where it was spent on luxury goods produced by local
craftsmen and artisans, and on expensive, long-running building
schemes. Local entrepreneurs who recognised the economic potential
of a town developed residential suburbs which attracted wealthy
residents. Meanwhile town authorities invested in the building and
maintenance of bridges, gates, walls and ditches, often with
financial support from wealthy residents. Royal lordship was also
an advantage to a town, as it gave the town authorities direct
access to the king and bypassed local power-brokers such as bishops
and earls. The legacy of medieval investment remains visible today
in the streets of important towns. Drawing on rentals, deeds and
surveys, this book also examines in detail the topography of seven
key medieval towns: Bristol, Gloucester, Coventry, Cambridge,
Birmingham, Shrewsbury and Hull. In each case, surviving records
identify the location and value of urban properties, and their
owners and tenants. Using statistical techniques, previously
applied only to the early modern and modern periods, the book
analyses the impact of location and type of property on property
values. It shows that features of the modern property market,
including spatial autocorrelation, were present in the middle ages.
Property hot-spots of high rents are also identified; the most
valuable properties were those situated between the market and
other focal points such transport hubs and religious centres,
convenient for both, but remote from noise and pollution. This book
takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on expertise from the
disciplines of economics and history. It will be of interest to
historians and to social scientists looking for a long-run
perspective on urban development.
What are the secrets of a successful entrepreneur? When did the
origins of enterprise occur? This important two-volume set
addresses such questions by uniting historical case studies of
entrepreneurial behaviour from 1200-2000. Key features of this
collection include a thematic and chronological comparison of
relevant studies as well as coverage of a range of industries,
including the software industry. The editors have also selected
papers which allow for an examination of a range of entrepreneurial
backgrounds and personalities, including female entrepreneurs. This
topical set will be of great use to both students and academics who
will benefit from the ability to contrast case-studies of
large-firms and their executives with small firm-start-ups and
their founders.
This ambitious collection follows the evolution of capitalism from
its origins in 13th-century European towns to its 16th-century
expansion into Asia, Africa and South America and on to the global
capitalism of modern day. Written by distinguished historians and
social scientists, the chapters examine capitalism and its critics
and the level of variation and convergence in its operation across
locations. The authors illuminate the aspects of capitalism that
have encouraged, but also limited, social responsibility and
environmental sustainability. Covering times, places and topics
that have often been overlooked in the existing literature, this
important contribution to the field of economic history charts the
most comprehensive chronology of capitalism to date.
The idea of corporate social responsibility may seem like a recent
trend, but the previously unpublished historical documents on
Cambridge’s sophisticated urban property market reveal that
businesses have been practicing what is sometimes referred to as
“Compassionate Capitalism” for nearly a thousand years. This
transdisciplinary study presents an invaluable contribution to our
knowledge of the early phases of capitalism.
Exploring how crises have shaped economic and social life from the
thirteenth century to the twenty-first. This collection of essays
brings together historians examining social and economic crises
from the thirteenth century to the twenty-first. Crisis is an
almost ubiquitous concept for historians, applicable across
(amongst others) the histories of agriculture, disease, finance and
trade. Yet there has been little attempt to compare its use as an
explanatory tool between these discrete fields of research. This
volume breaks down the boundaries between traditional historical
time periods and sub-disciplines of history to examine the ways in
which past societies have coped with crises, and the role of crisis
in generating economic and social change. Should we conceptualise a
medieval agrarian or financial crisis differently from their modern
counterparts? Were there similarities in how contemporaries
responded to famine or outbreaks of disease? How comparable are
crises within households, within institutions, or across national
and international networks of trade? Contributors examine how
crises have shaped economic and social life in a range of studies
from the Great Depression in 1930s Latin America to the outbreak of
plague in seventeenth-century central Europe, and from sheep and
cattle murrain in fourteenth-century England to the Northern Rock
building society collapse of 2007. A.T. BROWN is an Addison Wheeler
Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Durham
University. ANDY BURN is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute
of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Durham University. ROB
DOHERTY is a doctoral candidate in history at DurhamUniversity.
CONTRIBUTORS: Peter H. Bent, A.T. Brown, Andy Burn, Catherine
Casson, Mark Casson, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Rob Doherty, Josette
Duncan, Matthew Hollow, Pavla Jirkova, Alan Knight, John S. Lee,
Cinzia Lorandini,John Martin, Ranald Michie, Anne L. Murphy, Pamela
Nightingale, John Singleton, Philip Slavin, Paul Warde
One of the most important manuscripts surviving from
thirteenth-century England, the corpus of documents known as the
Hundred Rolls for Cambridge have been incomplete until the recent
discovery of an additional roll. This invaluable volume replaces
the previous inaccurate transcription by the record commission of
1818 and provides new translations and additional appendices.
Shedding new light on important facets of business activity in
thirteenth-century Cambridge, this volume makes a significant
contribution to our knowledge of the early phases of capitalism.
This unique text will be of interest to anyone working in the
fields of economic and business history, entrepreneurship,
philanthropy and medieval studies. A research monograph based on
recently discovered historical documents, Compassionate Capitalism:
Business and Community in Medieval England, by Casson et al, is
also now available from Bristol University Press.
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