Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 2 (2013), p. 352

In recent years, there has been a sad tendency, chiefly among cliometricians, to approach various topics in economic history through the prism of anachronistic econometric models. Such an approach means a painful sacrifice of the historical context, which, in many cases, is dismissed altogether. The current book is an important reminder that complex themes in economic history cannot be fully appreciated unless broader historical and philosophical contexts are considered. James Davis’s Medieval market mortality is a first-rate study of a highly important, yet somewhat understudied topic. Broadly speaking, this book looks at the impact of various medieval concepts and commandments, as shaped by theological writings, on market regulation and activities in late medieval England.

The book comprises four (very) long, yet straightforward, chapters. Chapter 1 deals with contemporary perceptions of and attitudes towards retail traders. The generic coverage of sources is truly impressive: they range from literary texts, through theological writings and sermons, to works of visual art. Davis finds that petty traders were regarded as greedy and somewhat sinful elements within the society, who tended to profit from their trade by abusing and deceiving their clients. Such behaviour was most damaging to the common good of the community and stood in a sharp contradiction to social and religious morals of those days. The cunning and deceitful nature of traders, sometimes bordering on the deadly sin of avarice, prompted the community and the authorities to treat them with suspicion, which is reflected in the writings of late medieval philosophers and theologians. Just as for other sinners, the only way to salvation for greedy traders was repentance (achieved through restitution of gained goods and generous donations to the Church).

Chapter 2 looks at a set of laws and regulations enacted to restrain and control traders. Such legislation was passed on both the macro-level (royal statutes) and the micro-level (borough ordinances, guild regulations), and included a series of mechanisms to ensure relatively fair trade. These included regulations of public marketplaces, trade on Sunday, public order and sanitation, weights and measures, coinage, bargaining, credit, prices, usury and, naturally, the ubiquitous Assize of Bread and Ale. The discussion of the latter occupies 15 pages (pp. 233–48) and it provides a most authoritative treatment of the subject. Instead of focusing on the contents of the original Assize, Davis discusses its changing character across space and time. In all cases, trading legislation is to be understood not only in broader socio-political and economic perspective, but also in the context of religious and moral norms and views of those days.

Chapter 3 studies the behaviour of market traders within a local context of Suffolk (one of the most commercialized and ‘market-ized’ counties in England), focusing on three market loci: the small market towns of Newmarket and Clare and the borough market of Ipswich. Particular attention is given to the implementation of the Assize of Bread and Ale and other regulations on trading transgressors. As Davis shows, in many cases local authorities were caught in the dichotomy between the duty to penalize blatant transgressors and the practical need to let the perpetrators of minor frauds off without penalties. It should be borne in mind that urban markets were controlled and regulated by the town elites, consisting, inter alia, of merchants and producers. This, in turn, may explain their lenience towards petty transgressors, to ensure that business went on as usual. This fact reflects the gap between the theological, moralist and legal basis of market morality and its actual implementation.

A much shorter and less detailed Chapter 4 considers the continuity of market morality into the early modern period. Here, Davis draws upon the works of Keith Wrightson and E. P. Thompson, stressing the renewed and elevated concerns about trade, greed and market morality in the Tudor and early Stuart eras. Following Thompson, Davis places the criticism towards market traders in socio-economic reality of the early modern period, marked not only by social mobility and stratification, population growth, and the rise of consumerism, but also by impoverishment and outbreaks of famine. These changes brought about a harsh response from some Anglican preachers and moral philosophers, who stressed the immoral side of market activities. Chapter 4 is followed by a short conclusion, nicely wrapping up the main points of the book.

There is no doubt that this book has many merits. First, it is impressively interdisciplinary in its nature, incorporating a wide array of sources and perspectives, literary, statistical, legal and visual alike. Second, despite its potential to have been restricted to the narrow realm of numbers and figures, the monograph is imbued with human and cultural dimensions: thus, we are not only told how many amercements and ale-regrating offences were committed at Newmarket in the early fourteenth century, but we are also told how the same transgressions were perceived, theologically and legally. This connection between purely economic and cultural factors, studied so well by Davis, will undoubtedly set new scholarly standards. Third, the monograph is based not only on a solid bibliography of secondary works, but also on a fair number of unpublished archival sources, deriving from 15 different repositories (14 in England and the Huntingdon Library in San Marino, California).

Any shortcomings are minor and they in no way detract from the excellent quality of the book. For instance, Avner Greif is curiously misspelled throughout the book as ‘Avner Grief’; chapter 2 focuses primarily on the urban environment, and one wonders what the situation was on rural manorial markets; in chapter 3, one might wish to see a geographic comparison with other regions in England (it is unfortunate that the local case studies were restricted to Suffolk). All the same, this is an unquestionably first-rate contribution to scholarship and, as such, the author is to be lauded on his achievement.