The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire: Volume 2, Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages

Book excerpt: The second volume of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, first published in 1952, was a survey by an international group of specialist scholars covering trade and industry in pre-Roman, Roman and Byzantine Europe, the medieval trade of northern and southern Europe, and the histories of medieval woollen manufacture, mining and metallurgy, and building in stone. This second edition, in addition to revising most chapters and the bibliographies appended to them, also fills gaps which arose from the wartime and post-war circumstances in which the first edition was written. New chapters provide accounts of the trade and industry of eastern Europe, of medieval Europe's trade with Asia and Africa, and of medieval coinage and currency. Taken with volumes I and III of the series, this volume is designed to complete a comprehensive review of the economic history of medieval Europe as a whole. It was planned by the late Sir Michael Postan, and was largely completed under his editorship.