Suchergebnisse

The problem of how North American medievalists should deal with social and economic history is one which seems to have some importance the present time. Two recent articles in the JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY are concerned with this matter. So are two others which have just appeared in the American Historical Review and which, since they examine quantitative history in general, throw light on this problem. Because of this kind of current interest, it was decided to hold a special session devoted to social and economic history at the recent semicentennial anniversary meeting of the Mediaeval Academy of America. This session was preceded by a questionnaire sent to 105 medieval historians of the United States and Canada who represented every field study, every age group, and every geographic area of this continent. Seventy replies were received and a lively discussion took place later at the meeting itself, which some thirty scholars attended. This article represents an attempt to sum up the results of both the survey and the subsequent discussion because it should be of value not only to medievalists but also to a wider body of scholars who share an interest in economic and social history in general.

In Early Medieval Northern Europe, food was more than mere sustenance. Rather, dietary choices were used to define and manipulate identity and shape power politics. Using the Norse Earldom of Orkney as a case study and commensality as an analytical framework, the authors explore how the archaeology of food, and in particular zooarchaeological evidence, can be used alongside near contemporary historical sources to better understand the political and social role of food, as well as the likely scale and impact of commensal activities on farming economies and environments in the Medieval North Atlantic. They argue that feasting and, by extension, the mechanisms by which preferentially consumed foodstuffs were grown, procured and processed, would have had a transformative impact on Norse society at diverse scales, from enabling individuals to participate in social negotiations to driving local and regional economies.

AbstractThe paper provides a brief review of system dynamics activity in continental Europe. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Volume I offers an introductory survey of the phenomenon of genocide. The first five chapters examine its major recurring themes, while the further nineteen are specific case studies. The combination of thematic and empirical approaches illuminates the origins and long history of genocide, its causes, consistent characteristics, and the connections linking various cases from earliest times to the early modern era. The themes examined include the roles of racism, the state, religion, gender prejudice, famine, and climate crises, as well as the role of human decision-making in the causation of genocide. The case studies cover events on four continents, ranging from prehistoric Europe and the Andes to ancient Israel, Mesopotamia, the early Greek world, Rome, Carthage, and the Mediterranean. It continues with the Norman Conquest of England's North, the Crusades, the Mongol Conquests, medieval India and Viet Nam, and a panoramic study of pre-modern China, as well as the Spanish conquests of the Canary Islands, the Caribbean, and Mexico

Is the history of the modern world the history of Europe writ large? Or is it possible to situate the history of modernity as a world historical process apart from its origins in Western Europe? In this posthumous collection of essays, Marshall G. S. Hodgson challenges adherents of both Eurocentrism and multiculturalism to rethink the place of Europe in world history. He argues that the line that connects Ancient Greeks to the Renaissance to modern times is an optical illusion, and that a global and Asia-centred history can better locate the European experience in the shared histories of humanity. Hodgson then shifts the historical focus and in a parallel move seeks to locate the history of Islamic civilisation in a world historical framework. In so doing he concludes that there is but one history - global history - and that all partial or privileged accounts must necessarily be resituated in a world historical context. The book also includes an introduction by the editor, Edmund Burke, contextualising Hodgson's work in world history and Islamic history