Product Description

Newly available in paperback, this is a wonderfully readable account of the role of merchants and money in the medieval world. Professor Spufford, who has made a lifelong study of the subject, brings together a vast amount of material from archives all over the world to build up this important economic history of the origins of capitalism â essential reading for the scholar, but also engaging and entertaining to the layman.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166669 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author
Peter Spufford is Emeritus Professor of European History at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge.

Customer Reviews

Shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize 2003
Peter Spufford’s beautifully written, deeply researched and richly illustrated Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe involves the reader in a series of vivid journeys which the author himself boldly made across Europe in the tracks of the travellers he describes, by road, by sea, through great cities, across bridges and over mountain passes. He draws an unfailingly entertaining picture of life in the 13th and 14th centuries, and gives an encyclopaedic account of their trading patterns. Covering topics from the way in which trade forced a drive towards literacy and numeracy, to the overruling of the Christian prohibition on slavery that allowed rich Florentines to buy slave girls as objects of conspicuous luxury, he is always surprising, enlightening and thought provoking. His book is a joy to read and destined to become a classic.

A grass-roots History of Medieval Europe
This is an expensive looking book, printed on high quality paper with an amazing number of illustrations. Many of them are in colour and include reproductions of paintings, pictures, maps, statues, manuscripts, engravings and photographs.

I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the trade routes across the mountains which explained amongst other things why some routes fell out of favour, how bridges and road maintainance was financed or not. Also how trade changed the use of builings and why.

Some parts of the book can seem a bit like a long list of goods and places but on the whole I would recommend it to anyone interested in this period - it shows how ordinary people lived not just Kings and Princes.

A beautiful and fascinating book - how the 'west' was made!
This is a fascinating account of the creation of modern Western civilisation as we know it. Though not always the easiest read it is very well worth persevering. It has really made me want to get out and visit so many places I'd never have thought interesting, or even heard of. A great read and a wonderful companion when visiting Europe.