M. M. Postan, Edward Miller (eds.):
Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages
(The Cambridge Economic History of Europe,
Volume II, 2nd edition), Cambridge: Cambridge University ress, 1987, XIV,
999 pp.
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Research into the history of the eighth and ninth centuries, as well as the representation of its findings, has become an all-European issue in the last forty years. The most eloquent testimony to this rediscovery of the roots of European identity was the 1965 Aachen exhibition on Charlemagne and the five-volume monograph published on this occasion. It was the appearance of this monograph that established the connection, now paradigmatic in historical research, between the Carolingian reign and the emergence of medieval Europe.
It is perhaps in this spirit of a common European heritage, then, that the overwhelming majority of the twenty-seven historians who contributed to the new volume of the New Cambridge Medieval History are European. Their endeavour was formidable, indeed; in depicting two of the most definitive centuries of early medieval Europe, they attempted to bring the questions raised by recent historiographical research to bear on the major political events of the period under scrutiny. [...]
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On the millecentenary of the occupation of the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarians, it is worthwhile to examine how a recent English reference work deals with the appearance of the Hungarians in this region, and how such a historical account can integrate the newcomers into the web of relations among the indigenous peoples. The present reviewer's findings are nothing short of disappointing in this regard. Discussions of the issues mentioned above are few and far between and rather insubstantial, despite the relevance of the conquest of Hungary to a number of chapters included in the book. Describing the reign of Arnulf and the Moravians in his chapter on the East Frankish successor states, Johannes Fried merely touches on the role of the Hungarians, and he has no more than few words to say about the Hungarian raids to the West. Neither the chapter on the Frankish frontier regions by Julia Smith nor the cogent observations to be found in abundance in the other chapters alleviate the Hungarian reader's disappointment. Most significantly, the radical extent to which the conquest of the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarians modified the balance of powers in this region is not brought home to the reader. Nor can this omission be excused by the fact that the event under discussion falls outside the chronological boundaries of the volume; for there are several mentions of early-tenth-century developments, including a brief but accurate account of the battle fought in 907, presumably near Pozsony/Bratislava/Pressburg. There is reason to suspect that, while many of the authors undoubtedly have adequate knowledge of the Hungarian Conquest, they consider this information of marginal significance and hence feel exempt from the task of acquainting the reader with even the most pivotal events - this having the unfortunate consequence that according to the New Cambridge Medieval History the Hungarians just haven't made it to the map of late ninth-century Europe.
Other political entities of the Eastern European region have hardly come off better. The emergence of the first Bulgarian empire, its ethnic composition, and its conversion to Christianity, is accurately reconstructed in the chapter written by Jonathan Shepard. However, we find no account whatsoever of the early Russian development, though the editor promises to make up for this omission in the following volume in the series. Since the chronological boundary of this current volume (the turn of the ninth and the tenth century) marks almost exactly the disintegration of the Moravian state, it ought to contain the crux of what New Cambridge Medieval History has to say about the Moravians; yet one finds at best sporadic and cursory references to this people. At the same time, the omission of more recent, problematic conjectures concerning "Great Moravia" is to be welcome.
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The new, expanded and revised edition of Volume Two of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe appeared in 1987, thirty-five years after its first edition, under the title Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages. Already the table of contents, listing four new chapters, indicates the attempt of the editor - the late Michael Postan - to up-date the volume. Beside eight British and two American university professors, the list of contributors includes two scholars from Poland: Aleksander Gieysztor and Marian Mallowist. Both of them belong to those pre-eminent medievalists from the Eastern bloc whose publications frequently appeared in the most prestigious Western journals and anthologies, thus representing in a sense the whole region in the Western European scientific arena. How much can an outsider find out about medieval Hungary from this impressive work? Skimming through the index, we note numerous references to Hungary. It is the chapter by Marian Mallowist on Eastern European trade from the thirteenth to fifteenth century which has the most extensive discussion of Hungary. However, the CEHE provides rather meagre data concerning the preceding periods. A potentially controversial statement traces back the beginnings of Hungarian silver mining to the eighth century, and dates its boom period to the twelfth and thirteenth century as opposed to the fourteenth century, as generally presumed. The chapter on Northern European trade, written by Michael Postan, fails to do justice to Hungarian history; the three or four references it makes convey relatively superficial information. Nonetheless, the hypothesis that the bows of English bowmen were made from Carpathian wood may shed new light upon the extent and structure of medieval Hungarian exports. Other than that, Postan only mentions the fact that English and Dutch cloth was traded as far as Hungary, and that Hungarian copper reached the Northwestern regions of Europe through Hanseatic mediation. The author of the chapter on Mediterranean trade, Robert S. Lopez, and Aleksander Gieysztor, who writes about Eastern European trade before the 13th century, were apparently content with one short digression each concerning Hungary.
Among the authors of this particular volume of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe, it is Marian Mallowist who displays the most solid and elaborate knowledge of the Hungarian aspects of medieval European trade. Mallowist begins with an analysis of the significance of the geographical complexity of the East Central European region. He recapitulates the point, already established by him in greater detail, that Upper Hungary was up to the thirteenth century one of the fastest-developing areas in the region. Mallowist also points out that the exploitation of gold, silver, and copper in Upper Hungary and Transylvania powered a dynamic economic upswing well into the fourteenth century. Although Mallowist focuses mainly on the Northern and North Western economic relations of Hungary (to Poland and Bohemia) he doesn't neglect the expansion, beginning in the fourteenth century, of Nuremberg merchants to Hungary. Elsewhere, he cites data supplied by the so-called "Runtingerbuch" to call attention to a rarely mentioned export route of Hungarian florins; apparently, the Regensburg trading company obtained the Hungarian currency in Prague.
As it makes up for a veritable hiatus in scholarship, the section dealing with Hungarian-Bohemian economic relations is of particular importance from the point of view of Hungarian history. Indeed, one would look in vain in English reference works or even scholarly articles for such a concise and finely balanced account of the subject. Although the economies of both countries were informed by the central importance of mining, which gave rise to strikingly similar economic tendencies in both cases, Mallowist is careful to underscore the different, as it were complementary, features of the Hungarian and the Bohemian economy. Not only did the relatively underdeveloped textile industry of Bohemia find a market in Hungary, it was via Bohemia, according to Mallowist's account, that German, Dutch, and Italian cloth reached Hungary. In the reverse direction, Hungary supplied Bohemia with cattle and gold coinage, the latter making its way to the Western European market as well.
Mallowist's treatment of the trade relations between Hungary and Poland may also be of considerable interest to the Hungarian reader. His straightforward account clarifies the way in which medieval Hungarian trade relations to the north, having reached the Baltic Sea, became integrated into one of the pivotal trading routes in Europe. At the same time, it needs to be pointed out that Mallowist's claim to the effect that no sources are available concerning trade relations between Upper Hungary and Little Poland before the fourteenth century is open to question. Suffice it to mention only the 1288 customs' register of Esztergom, which awards the same prerogatives to Polish merchants engaged in trading painted cloth as enjoyed by merchants from other countries. In another passage, the reader is told that King Matthias Corvinus reigned over Silesia from 1445 to 1490, whereas, as even elementary school pupils are expected to know in Hungary, the Renaissance monarch reigned from 1458-1490. In the same chapter, we find an imprecise documentation of the primary source listing Hungarian goods that reached Brugge at the end of the 13th century, frequently quoted in Hungarian historical research.
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[...] There are references to two studies by György Székely which have been translated into German and French, respectively. Gyula László's work is represented by a 1963 paper, the identification of which by a foreign reader is hindered by no less than six spelling errors in the citation of the four-word Hungarian title. The bibliography of the chapter on woollen industry makes references to two studies by Walter Endrei which were published in France. Peter Spufford, who wrote the chapter on coinage and currency, must have been hard pressed to support his claims concerning the medieval Hungarian mint - a subject he covers, admittedly, with admirable thoroughness - with adequate bibliographical references; in any case, his reliance on Bálint Hóman's 1922 study in Italian cannot be taken to substantiate his supposed grasp of the topic.
It is particularly regrettable that neither this volume of the Cambridge Economic History nor other works by Spufford on the history of currencies incorporate the work of Oszkár Paulinyi, for his studies could be of invaluable help to the foreign reader who wants to see the role of Hungary in the network of medieval European economy. There are further internationally accessible works by Hungarian authors relevant to the history of medieval European trade whose absence impoverishes this volume; suffice it to mention only the works of Erik Fügedi, András Kubinyi, Jenõ Szücs, and László Kovács. It is with some surprise that we note the lack of references to Ondrej R. Halaga's works concerning the international commercial connections of the Eastern parts of Upper Northern Hungary. His conclusions having been published in major Western languages, they would seem to deserve inclusion in such a definitive reference work. Equally surprising is that we find only one reference to Wolfgang von Stromer in the bibliography of the chapter on coinage and currency. The research conducted by this Professor Emeritus at the University of Nuremberg-Erlangen is, after all, so fundamental to our understanding of the expansion of South German capital in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that his conclusions have become virtually indispensible to any reconstruction of the web of commercial relations in late medieval Central Europe.
Given the proliferation of valuable studies, it may appear somewhat redundant to note, with a sigh, that the list of works whose exclusion from the bibliography is open to objection could be continued indefinitely. Yet it is striking that the most recent work published in Hungary which is cited in the CEHE appeared in 1966, and even among the works of Hungarian historians published abroad we cannot find a single title published more recently than twenty-four years ago. To be sure, this omission can be explained by the lack of internationally circulated periodicals which could publish papers by Hungarian scholars in foreign languages. The Acta Historica no longer exists, while the Annales series edited by the Faculty of Humanities of the Eötvös Loránd University has not released a new volume for years; the journal History and Society, launched with a wide variety of objectives and published irregularly, has so far produced only two issues.
To conclude, the bibliography of this volume of the CEHE, while more helpful than that of comparable works, falls short of providing a reliable list of works which would represent a consistent level of scholarly quality. More specifically, the linguistic and national biases of the authors have left their imprint on the bibliography. Although the volume indicates a new openness toward East Central Europe - for which primarily the two Polish authors must be given credit - the contributors have unduly relegated connections relevant to Hungary as well as the results of Hungarian historical research to the periphery of attention.
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