Medieval Statistics

Medieval statistics provide a unique window on the past. This book is the first to systematically examine the sources of medieval statistics. It will be useful as a handbook for researchers in financial and cultural history, as a history of financial record-keeping, and as a review of recent research into medieval finance and accounting based on statistical sources. Medieval documents produced by royal governments, monastic and ecclesiastical institutions, urban boroughs and legal cases for debt recovery provide a mine of useful information on economic life and financial affairs. They show that medieval administration was far more numerate, and far more sophisticated than is usually recognized. This book provides a comprehensive review of the key sources, written by leading experts in the field. The strengths and weaknesses of each source are reviewed, using original documents for illustration, and discussing examples from the recent literature. England is used as a case study because of the range of surviving data and the level of detail that it can provide. This edited volume will be a valuable tool for those working in financial, cultural, and political history, as it seeks to analyse the various ways in which medieval life was documented numerically and highlight the ways in which these statistics are being used by historians to transform our understanding of the medieval past. Mark Casson is Professor of Economics at the University of Reading and Director of the Centre for Institutions and Economic History at Reading. He has long-standing research interests in entrepreneurship, business culture, the economics of the multinational enterprise, business history, the economic history of towns, and transport studies. John S. Lee is a Research Associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. His research interests are in the economy and society of medieval England, and local and regional history. Contributors: Nicholas R. Amor, Martin Allen, Stephen Broadberry, Catherine Casson, Jordan Claridge, Alisdair Dobie, Robert C. Nash, Stephen H. Rigby, Greg Salter, James T. Walker.