Great article!
Robert Blackmore (University of Southampton)
Tacuina sanitatis (XIV century)
9-autunno,Taccuino Sanitatis, Casanatense 4182. Available at <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:29-autunno,Taccuino_Sanitatis,_Casanatense_4182..jpg>
Episodes of major market volatility are rarely out of the headlines today. Their ramifications, though considerable, are discussed as if these were somehow new, and that they are the result of how economies are structured in our globalised world. Yet prices in international markets in the late middle ages could be just as volatile and have just as far-reaching consequences.
The wine trade between Gascony and England is one key example. Gascony, in modern southwestern France, was part of the medieval duchy of Aquitaine: a territory ruled by the English crown almost without interruption from 1154 to 1453.
Geography and geology permitted the production of just one commodity, wine, and as a result the region was dependent, like so many modern states specialised in fossil fuels or mining, on export earnings to pay for…
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