This book demolishes the widely held view that the phrase 'medieval business' is an oxymoron. The authors review the entire range of business in medieval western Europe, probing its Roman and Christian heritage to discover the economic and political forces that shaped the organization of agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, transportation and marketing. Businessmen's responses to the devastating plagues, famines, and warfare that beset Europe in the late Middle Ages are equally well covered. Medieval businessmen's remarkable success in coping with this hostile new environment was 'a harvest of adversity' that prepared the way for the economic expansion of the sixteenth century. Two main themes run through this book. First, the force and direction of business development in this period stemmed primarily from the demands of the elite. Second, the lasting legacy of medieval businessmen was less their skillful adaptations of imported inventions than their brilliant innovations in business organization.

"...Hunt and Murray provide a very well informed and intelligent exposition of medieval business developments for the nonspecialist." Choice

"[Hunt and Murry's] basic findings are that business was driven by the demand of the elite for exotic goods, and that the lasting contribution of Medieval business was organization rather than the innovations they imported." Reference & Research Book News

"[Hunt and Murray's] basic findings are that business was driven by the demand of the elite for exotic goods, and that the lasting contribution of Medieval business was organization rather than the innovations they imported." Reference & Research Book News

"This succinct and beautifully written book is a worthy edition to the distinguished series, Cambridge Medieval Textbooks." The Historian

"...at last we have a nuanced alternative to the old orthodoxies and an eminently persuasive one which, while never underplaying the genuine problems of the late medieval economy, creates a scenario in which the early modern economic take-off makes sense." Envoi.

"Hunt and Murray have done a valuable service in producing this textbook...The authors are also to be commended for their ability to transform sometimes technical business jargon into well-crafted, readable prose." Speculum