Professor John Munro passed away on December 23, 2013. This site is maintained and kept online as an archive. For more infomation please visit the Centre for Medieval Studies

Prof. John H. Munro
Department of Economics
University of Toronto
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/





BIBLIOGRAPHIES FOR ECO 201Y: 'A'-LIST TOPICS - Short Format: for 2003 - 2004



Topics in the Economic History of Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, c.1250-1750



These bibliographies are in the short-format only. Please see the general notes about bibliographies for undergraduate economic history courses.



The following topics are on the 'A'-list for 2003 - 2004; and some of them will be transferred to the 'B'-list for the following year (if this course is given again), when most of this year's 'B'-list topics will, conversely, become 'A'-list topics. Each year a different set of 10 topics, 5 topics for each of the two terms, is chosen from the Master List of essay topics, though with some occasional duplications, of the most important topics.



The following topics are numbered in the sequence 1 - 10; but the term 'Topic no.' following each of these numbers refers to the Topic Number in the Master List of Essay/Tutorial Topics for Eco. 201Y1. You should refer to this Master List for a more detailed discussion of the debates about and thus the significance of each of these major topics, in European economic history.



See: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/201TUTOP.pdf



These bibliographies are provided in both PDF format (default) and in MS-Word. To retrieve them, click on the blue-highlighted topic number for the pdf version, and on the highlighted words 'Also in MS Word', for that version; but do so only in the html version of this document (since the pdf version will not give you that access). There are no statistical tables or any other appendices in the short-format of these bibliographies. Usually presented in just two pages, they contain the most important readings and some key questions to be considered..



FIRST TERM: Fall Term, 2003: September to December 2003.



(1) Topic no. 1: The Great Famine, the Black Death, and the Late-Medieval Demographic Crises: Demography and Conjuncture in 14th- and 15th-Century Europe. Also available in MS Word.

(2) Topic no. 2 . The Problem of Serfdom in European Economic Development, I: The Decline of Serdom in Western Europe, ca. 1300 - ca. 1500. Also available in MS Word.

(3) Topic no. 5 The 'Great Depression' of the Late Middle Ages: Economic Slump or Economic Growth?. Also available in in MS Word

(4) Topic no. 9 . Urban Governments, Guilds, and Gender-Related Occupations in Late-Medieval European Towns, 1200 - 1500 . Also available in MS Word

(5) Topic no. 7: The Church, the Usury Question, and Late-Medieval Banking: the Foundations of Modern Finance. Also available in MS Word .




SECOND TERM, 2004: "A" LIST TOPICS: Winter-Spring Term: January to April 2004



(6) Topic no. 13: The Population Problem and the Economic Development of Early-Modern Europe (1500 - 1640): Was there a 'Malthusian Trap'? Also availabe in in MS Word.



(7) Topic no. 14 . The Era of the European 'Price Revolution', ca. 1540-1640: Inflation and Economic Growth, and the Hamilton Thesis on the Origins of 'Modern Industrial Capitalism'. Also available in MS Word

(8) Topic no. 17 . The 'Rise of the Gentry' Debate: On the Origins of Modern 'Agrarian Capitalism'. Also available in MS Word



(9) Topic no. 15 . The 'Rise of Capitalism' and the Protestant Reformations: The Weber- Tawney Theses on the 'Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism', 16th - 186th centuries. Also available in MS Word



(10) Topic no. 20 . The 'General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, c. 1620-1740: The Hobsbawm Thesis on the Transition from 'Feudalism to Modern Capialims' Also available in in MS Word .