Southern Italy in the Late Middle Ages

The first full-length study of mainland southern Italy's domestic market in the late Middle Ages, this book discusses the interaction between population, the market, and the region's institutional framework, in the context of the impact of the late medieval 'crisis' on the European economy. Based on new or little-used documentary evidence, it adopts an interdisciplinary approach and combines economic history with elements of economic theory to reassess common knowledge on demographic and urbanization trends, the organization of the domestic market, the role of the state, and on actual patterns of agricultural production, industrial activity and commercial itineraries. The result is a fresh look at the late medieval economy of the kingdom of Naples, which, it seems now, is worth studying for its own merit.

Eleni Sakellariou, Ph.D. (1996) in History, University of Cambridge, is Assistant Professor of Medieval European History at the University of Crete. She has published in English, Italian and Greek, on late medieval southern Italian history and on the history of the eastern Mediterranean after the Crusades.