The Circle of Money. Practices, Politics, and Policy in Premodern Societies (6th-17th Centuries)

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The Circle of Money. Practices, Politics, and Policy in Premodern Societies (6th-17th Centuries)

Veranstalter
Nils Bock
Veranstaltungsort
Barker Center, Room 113
Ort
Cambridge, MA
Land
United States
Vom - Bis
29.04.2016 - 30.04.2016
Website
http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/circle-money
Von
Nils Bock

Volkswagen Fellowship Symposia

Money is at once elusive and concrete. As a mode of economic exchange it exists within a relatively fixed playing field, with clearly delineated boundaries of benefits and costs. However, poor handling, bad advice, or even a bad turn at a game of chance can swallow money up in one fell swoop. Indeed, that money was a profoundly human endeavor was formulated in the mid-15th century, when Florentine Leon Battista Alberti claimed that money, if well managed, was practically contingency proof; however, nothing was less stable, harder to hold onto, or easier to lose than the almighty coin. Alberti’s words, intended to serve as a guiding principle for household management, gives us a glimpse into the variety of ways that Europeans theorized their own economic actions, and thought about money and its use. The workshop will investigate this wide array of pre-capitalist, western and non-western contexts from the English Isles, Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, and China between the Middle Ages and Early Modern times. Centrally, we will explore the social relationships that constituted the value of money, and its role in economic practice. Key themes will include the relationship between money and other forms of capital, different ways of interaction, and the role of money in stabilizing or disturbing socio-economic forms of transformation.

Programm

Friday, April 29
2:30 pm
Welcome / Introduction
Nils Bock
University of Münster and Harvard University

3:00 pm
Panel One: Everyday Economies: The Role of Individual Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 1)
Panelists
Credit Networks in a Late Medieval Commercial Giant: The Case of Ypres
Martha Howell
Columbia University

Of Ports, Peasants, and Money: The Archaeology of Specialist and Mercantile Agency in the Economic Development of Western Europe, c. AD 650-1150
Christopher Loveluck
University of Nottingham and Harvard University

Moderator
Maryanne Kowaleski
Fordham University and the Radcliffe Institute

4:30 pm
Coffee Break

5:00 pm
Panel One: Everyday Economies: The Role of Individual Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 2)
Panelist
Of Private, Public Agents: Modern Categories, Premodern Economies, and Enduring Anachronisms
Thomas Max Safley
University of Pennsylvania

Moderator
Maryanne Kowaleski

5:45 pm
Panel Two: State Economies: The Role of Public Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 1)
Panelist
Templars and Lombards as Public Actors in Medieval France (12th to 14th Century): A Contribution to the History of Money and Capital
Nils Bock

Moderator
Maryanne Kowaleski

Saturday, April 30
9:00 am
Panel Two: State Economies: The Role of Public Actors in Making Premodern Money (Part 2)
Panelists

Policy Maker, Money Lender, and Product Consumer: The Northern Song State During China's "Medieval Economic Revolution"
Ling Zhang
Boston College

Commodious or Commodity? Unminted Silver Money in Ming China (1368-1644)
Bruce Rusk
University of British Columbia

10:30 am
Coffee Break

11:00 am
Panel Three: Market Economies: The Role of Commercial and Financial Actors in Making Premodern Money
Panelists

Notes for the History of Money and Credit in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Case of the Geniza Merchants
Jessica Goldberg
University of California, Los Angeles

Anomaly and Florentine Wages at the Time of the Black Death
William Caferro
Vanderbilt University

12:30 pm
Lunch Break

2:00 pm
Closing Remarks and Final Discussion
A Return of Economic History? New Approaches to the History of Late Medieval Europe
Martin Kintzinger
University of Münster

Kontakt

Nils Bock
Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University
Warren House 11 Prescott Street, Cambridge, MA
nilsbock@fas.harvard.edu

http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/circle-money