History and Economic Life

Georg Christ is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Manchester, UK. His research focuses on the late medieval eastern Mediterranean and Veneto-Mamluk trade and political relations, the history of knowledge management and the late medieval socio-economic transition. Philipp R. Rössner is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Manchester, UK, and Member of the Young Academy, Saxon Academy of Sciences. His publications and research interests are in late medieval and early modern German cultural and monetary history, history of capitalism, history of the Reformation, eighteenth-century Scotland, history of political economy and pre-classical economic reasoning (Cameralism, ‘mercantilism’).

'A valuable and very welcome introduction to the rich variety of approaches to research in economic history'.Martin Chick, Professor of Economic History, University of Edinburgh, UK

• Introduction: Why and how do we read economic history sources? Part 1: Toolbox 1 The Study of Economic History Methods and Sources 2 What do we analyse - typology of sources 3 How to read economic history sources quantitatively 4 How do we analyse sources: Source analysis – the qualitative method Part 2: Case Studies 5 Origins of Capitalism: Transcultural Trade or Pepper Travelling from India to England 6 Origins of Capitalism II: Medieval urban property markets: Thirteenth-century Coventry revisited 7 Counting cows and coins: Monitoring the economy through port records, and trade statistics in the early modern period 8 Historical account books as a source for quantitative history 9 History through objects: The Example of Coins 10 The news and numbers: A guide to using digitized newspapers 11 Monsieur le Directeur: Letters and ‘Ordinary’ Investors in Modern France