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First Published in 1994. Writing as a unified team, the authors, three French economists—they insist they are economists, not economic historians, though they are steeped in the monetary, financial, economic, social, and political history of Europe in the sixteenth century—have written a fascinating account of the development of means of payment at the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the modern period. The account is limited for the most part to what they call “Latin Christianity”—primarily France, Italy, and Spain. It describes both the development of an integrated circuit of intra-European payments by means of bills of exchange negotiated at trade and payment fairs and the emergence of national systems of money of account and metallic coins at the hands of the monarchs of the emerging state system.
First Published in 1994. Writing as a unified team, the authors, three French economists—they insist they are economists, not economic historians, though they are steeped in the monetary, financial, economic, social, and political history of Europe in the sixteenth century—have written a fascinating account of the development of means of payment at the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the modern period. The account is limited for the most part to what they call “Latin Christianity”—primarily France, Italy, and Spain. It describes both the development of an integrated circuit of intra-European payments by means of bills of exchange negotiated at trade and payment fairs and the emergence of national systems of money of account and metallic coins at the hands of the monarchs of the emerging state system.
A provocative new theory of “the economy,” its history, and its politics that better unites history and economics What is the economy, really? Is it a “market sector,” a “general equilibrium,” or the “gross domestic product”? Economics today has become so preoccupied with methods that economists risk losing sight of the economy itself. Meanwhile, other disciplines, although often intent on criticizing the methods of economics, have failed to articulate an alternative vision of the economy. Before the ascent of postwar neoclassical economics, fierce debates raged, as many different visions of the economy circulated and competed with one another. In The Real Economy, Jonathan L...
In this discipline-defining volume, some of the leading international scholars in the history of economic thought re-examine the concepts of 'classical economics' and the 'canon', illuminating the roots and evolution of the contemporary discipline.
At the start of the eighteenth century Louis XIV needed to remit huge sums of money abroad to support his armies during the War of the Spanish Succession. This book explains how international bankers moved French money across Europe, and how the foreign exchange system was so overloaded by the demands of war that a massive banking crash resulted.
Did you hear the one about the Mother Superior who was so busy casting the first stone that she got caught in flagrante delicto with her lover? What about the drunk with a Savior complex who was fool enough to believe himself to be the Second Coming? And that's nothing compared to what happens when comedy gets its grubby paws on the confessional. Enter fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French farce, the "bestseller" of a world that stands to tell us a lot about the enduring influence of a Shakespeare or a Molière. It's the sacrilegious world of Immaculate Deception, the third volume in a series of stage-friendly translations from the Middle French. Brought to you through the wonders of Open ...
What the loans and defaults of a sixteenth-century Spanish king can tell us about sovereign debt today Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign borrowers who promptly go bankrupt? When can this type of lending work? As the United States and many European nations struggle with mountains of debt, historical precedents can offer valuable insights. Lending to the Borrower from Hell looks at one famous case—the debts and defaults of Philip II of Spain. Ruling over one of the largest and most powerful empires in history, King Philip defaulted four times. Yet he never lost access to capital markets and could borrow again within a year or two of each default. Exploring the shrewd reas...
Was there more to comedy than Chaucer, the Second Shepherds’ Play, or Shakespeare? Of course! But, for a real taste of medieval and Renaissance humor and in-your-face slapstick, one must cross the Channel to France, where over two hundred extant farces regularly dazzled crowds with blistering satires. Dwarfing all other contemporaneous theatrical repertoires, the boisterous French corpus is populated by lawyers, lawyers everywhere. No surprise there. The lion’s share of mostly anonymous farces was written by barristers, law students, and legal apprentices. Famous for skewering unjust judges and irreligious ecclesiastics, they belonged to a 10,000-member legal society known as the Basoche...
Did you hear the one about the newlywed who rushes off for legal advice before the honeymoon is over? Or the husbands who arrange for an enormous tub in which to cure their sugary wives with a pinch of salt? How about a participatory processional toward marriage so sacrilegious that it puts Chaucer's pilgrimage to shame? And who could have imagined a medieval series of plays devoted to spouse-swapping? Jody Enders has heard and seen all this and more, and shares it in her second volume of performance-friendly translations of medieval French farces. Carefully culled from more than two hundred extant farces, and crafted with a wit and contemporary sensibility that make them playable half a mil...