Money is at once elusive and concrete. As a mode of economic exchange it exists within a relatively fixed playing field, with clearly delineated boundaries of benefits and costs. However, poor handling, bad advice, or even a bad turn at a game of chance can swallow money up in one fell swoop. The workshop will investigate this wide array of pre-capitalist, western and non-western contexts from the English Isles, Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, and China between the Middle Ages and Early Modern times.

Argument

Money is at once elusive and concrete. As a mode of economic exchange it exists within a relatively fixed playing field, with clearly delineated boundaries of benefits and costs. However, poor handling, bad advice, or even a bad turn at a game of chance can swallow money up in one fell swoop. The workshop will investigate this wide array of pre-capitalist, western and non-western contexts from the English Isles, Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, and China between the Middle Ages and Early Modern times. Centrally, we will explore the social relationships that constituted the value of money, and its role in economic practice. Key themes will include the relationship between money and other forms of capital, different ways of interaction, and the role of money in stabilizing or disturbing socio-economic forms of transformation.

Program

Friday, April 29

• 2:30 pm | Welcome / Introduction, Nils Bock, University of Münster and Harvard University

3:00 pm | Panel One: Everyday Economies: The Role of Individual Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 1)

Panelists

• Credit Networks in a Late Medieval Commercial Giant: The Case of Ypres, Martha Howell, Columbia University
• Of Ports, Peasants, and Money: The Archaeology of Specialist and Mercantile Agency in the Economic Development of Western Europe, c. AD 650-1150, Christopher Loveluck, University of Nottingham and Harvard University
• Moderator : Maryanne Kowaleski, Fordham University and the Radcliffe Institute

4:30 pm | Coffee Break

5:00 pm | Panel One: Everyday Economies: The Role of Individual Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 2)

Panelist

• Of Private, Public Agents: Modern Categories, Premodern Economies, and Enduring Anachronisms, Thomas Max Safley, University of Pennsylvania
• Moderator : Maryanne Kowaleski

5:45 pm | Panel Two: State Economies: The Role of Public Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 1)

Panelist

• Templars and Lombards as Public Actors in Medieval France (12th to 14th Century): A Contribution to the History of Money and Capital, Nils Bock
• Moderator : Maryanne Kowaleski

Saturday, April 30

9:00 am | Panel Two: State Economies: The Role of Public Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 2)

Panelists

• Policy Maker, Money Lender, and Product Consumer: The Northern Song State During China's "Medieval Economic Revolution" Ling Zhang, Boston College
• Commodious or Commodity? Unminted Silver Money in Ming China (1368-1644) Bruce Rusk, University of British Columbia

10:30 am | Coffee Break

11:00 am | Panel Three: Market Economies: The Role of Commercial and Financial Actors in Making Premodern Money

Panelists

• Notes for the History of Money and Credit in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Case of the Geniza Merchants, Jessica Goldberg, University of California, Los Angeles
• Anomaly and Florentine Wages at the Time of the Black Death, William Caferro, Vanderbilt University

12:30 pm | Lunch Break

2:00 pm | Closing Remarks and Final Discussion

• A Return of Economic History? New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval Europe, Martin Kintzinger, University of Münster