Prompted by the ‘intense dissatisfaction’ of the author for ‘the traditional narratives of the “commercial revolution”’ (p. xl) and supported by years-long study and reflections, this book has undoubtedly some relevant merits. In fact, this volume widens our knowledge on the beginning of the medieval economic expansion, provides new interdisciplinary insights, and designs a compelling interpretative framework of feudal economies extensible beyond the Mediterranean (and the European) context.
For many years, as Wickham points out in the introduction, the study of the ‘commercial revolution’ that occurred during the central Middle Ages has been influenced by the scarcity of written records as well as by the ‘grand narratives of nationhood or supposed regional failures’ (p. 9), often based on post-1200 trends and on paradigmatic assumptions. However, the systematic analysis and comparison of an extensive sample of archaeological and written sources such as ceramic types and the famous Cairo Geniza records have led the author to challenge previous historical paradigms and to point out four main original features characterising the Mediterranean economic expansion between 950-1180. In this way, the book tests the ‘compelling hypotheses’ – then became axiomatic – of renowned scholars such as Bloch, Pirenne, Power, Lopez, Violante, Duby, Spufford and Abulafia on the expansion of trade in the Mediterranean during the so-called ‘long eleventh century’ (p. 7).
Firstly, Wickham argues that (i) this expansion was not Europe-driven but – as expected by the focus of the book – shared across the whole Mediterranean, with some regions leading since the beginning of the tenth century and others following later. Consequently, the author shows that (ii) the main leading economy in the Mediterranean between 950-1150 was Egypt and major scale exchanges (mostly between Islam polities) at that time were dominated for long by its (as well as by Sicilian and Byzantine) merchants: Italian ports and traders – usually considered as the main actors of such expansion – add themselves by force only in the twelfth century – as the Norsemen did before in the North-Sea Area and Russia – without producing (at the beginning) relevant commodities to exchange. In this regard, the economic and demographic development of the North-Sea area – which probably occurred one century earlier than in Italy, for instance – had not direct causal connections with that of Southern Europe – although did have comparable dynamics – as argued in the last chapter of the book.
More importantly, (iii) the Mediterranean economic expansion was not based on long-distance commercial and financial complexity as (also) world-system theories would suggest. Wickham shows that an integrated Mediterranean economy did not exist in the eleventh century: conversely, the commercial revolution consisted in ‘the greater linkage between regional economies, which were growing along their own lines and for their own reasons’ (p. 662). This is because – as the author claims – the core of any (medieval) economy is the relation between internal production and demand. Consequently, one should look first at the economic complexity of each region, ‘based on local demand, both of landowning of official elites and of peasants, for the development of sellable products, whether agrarian or artisanal, and on the consequent local and medium distance exchange of these products’ (p. 11) – represented by the donkey – and only then at the long-distance trades between these regions – identified with the boat. Finally, Wickham argues that (iv) major-scale exchange networks – when existing and expanding – were based on bulk commodities (especially manufactured goods such as textile and raw materials for them such as flax, wool, cotton together with foodstuff) rather than on luxuries (spices, jewels, corals, pearls…): the latter were economically marginal by definition.
All these points are extensively (and sometimes repetitively) discussed throughout the book, which is organised, after an introduction, around five (often lengthy) chapters. Each one is dedicated to a specific study-region – all together representing almost half of the Mediterranean basin – and they are all supported by detailed maps and figures: Egypt (chap. 2); North Africa (nowadays Tunisia) and Sicily together (3); the Byzantine Aegean heartland (4); the al-Andalus Iberian Peninsula (5); north-central Italy (Po Valley and Tuscany) (6). All chapters are introduced by an exhaustive review of the vast literature available, of the main sources used and of specific interpretative issues: after that, they all provide an up-to-date reconstruction of the institutions, networks and functioning of each regional and local economy together with its evolution between 950-1180. The book is then concluded with two shorter but denser chapters: there, the author uses the evidence found at regional level together with other emerging from the literature as well as from his previous work in two directions. Firstly (chap. 7), Wickham further discusses three main features of the medieval economic growth in the Mediterranean: the relation between economic growth with political changes and downturns; the evolution and the routes of long-distance trade networks; the presence of common explanatory factors. Then (chapter 8) the author builds up a broader interpretative framework of feudal economies by widening the analysis to north-western Europe and to the early medieval period.
Together, the last two chapters address the key objective of the book: explaining the medieval growth and the functioning of its economy. According to the author, the medieval economic growth was based on ‘regional economies which were often more complex internally than in the ancient world even though the trade which linked them together was often less large-scale’ (p. 17). This was because the interregional exchange in the medieval Mediterranean was not driven by the needs of the State as it was under the Romans but by the evolving balance between elites and peasants demand, both (mostly) satisfied at a local and regional level. This balance – as an alternative definition of the class struggle – is the key socio-economic factor explaining the pre-capitalist growth. In the feudal (or pre-capitalist) mode of production, it was the ‘sustainable’ surplus extraction (and the subsequent demand) enacted by state and landlords, firstly, and the slow fall of rents and taxes in real terms, later on, what widened the share of population producing and accessing the market. This view is openly owed by the author to Marxist historians such as Hilton, Bois, Brenner as well as (partly) to scholars belonging to the new institutional economics and to the English commercialisation theory. In practice, Wickham seems to be using some of the traditional arguments of the so-called ‘crisis of the feudal system’ to explain its precedent growth.
In conclusion, 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.
