Making Money in the Early Middle Ages

Coined money was scarce and valuable in early medieval Europe, but Rory Naismith argues that it was a powerful tool for articulating peoples' place in economic and social structures and a gauge for levels of economic complexity. He uses detailed case studies from the Mediterranean and northern Europe to propose a new reading of early medieval money as a point of contact between economic, social, and institutional history.

Format: Hardback
Length: 540 pages
Publication date: 11 July 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Between the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic upheavals of the twelfth, coined money was scarce and highly valued in Western Europe, making it difficult for the majority of the population to use. However, as Rory Naismith demonstrates in this enlightening study, coined money was produced and utilized throughout early medieval Europe. Naismith contends that using coined money carried particular significance when it was scarce, using detailed case studies from the Mediterranean and northern Europe to propose a new interpretation of early medieval money as a point of contact between economic, social, and institutional history.

Naismith examines structural issues such as the mining and circulation of metal and the use of bullion and other commodities as money, and then provides a chronological account of monetary development, discussing the post-Roman period of gold coinage, the rise of the silver penny in the seventh century, and the reconfiguration of elite power in relation to coinage in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the process, he challenges the conventional view of early medieval currency as the domain of elite gift-givers and intrepid long-distance traders. Even when there were few coins in circulation, Naismith argues, the ways they were used—to give gifts, to pay rents, to spend at markets—have much to tell us.

Weight: 942g
Dimension: 168 x 246 x 39 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691177403