Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages

“When time passes and the history of today is written in the right perspective, the name of Henri Pirenne will loom large in the list of his contemporaries.”
– Gray Cowan Boyce, The Legacy of Henri Pirenne

The ™Pirenne Thesis,∫ which holds that in the long run deep social, economic, cultural and religious movements are the result of equally deep fundamental causes, continues to be one of the sources used by medieval historians today. Based on this thesis, Henri Pirenne in his Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages examines in detail the course and characteristics of economic and social evolution in Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the mid-15th century. He explains in detail the changes in trade and urbanization under various headings, and discusses the underlying causes of the long-term consequences of social, economic, cultural and religious movements. He examines the conditions that prepared the ground for capitalism, how urban trade changed shape, the great population movements, the transformation of money itself and the factors that affected this transformation. This book contains all the guiding ideas that determined the beginning of modern economic and social historiography.