Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Vol. iii: Economic Organization and Policies inthe Middle Ages by M. M. Postan; E. E. Rich; Edward MillerReview by: F. S. L. LyonsIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 14, No. 53 (Mar., 1964), pp. 79-81Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30006368 .

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REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES 79 harassed and curt replies? Ought one not to know more about the dis- cussions at various government levels, ought one not to have more detailed investigation of government action--less how it took effect or failed to take effect, but more how it was motivated? If it comes to that, ought not the whole question of government intervention to be placed more firmly in its contemporary context? Professor W. L. Burn, in The age of equipoise, has recently published precisely such an analysis of the fumbling mid-Victorian efforts to deal with social problems within a frame-work that is often loosely described as laissez-faire, though that is a term which Professor Burn shows to have been almost meaningless. Mrs Woodham-Smith, of course, had not the advantage of Professor Burn's work to guide her, but the Irish Famine presented some of the same problems, and some of the selfsame men were involved. The Famine, surely, cannot be discussed in isolation, it has to be seen as a particular instance, crucial indeed, of a generalised predicament. Mrs Woodham-Smith, to be fair, recognises this at the end of her book, when she compares Irish sufferings with those the British Army was shortly to undergo in Crimea, but this would have been a more satis- fying book if the comparative method had permeated it more thoroughly.

One technical criticism must also be added at this point. In a book of this importance, drawing as it does upon a great mass of material, much of it unpublished and hitherto unused, the absence of a biblio- graphy is a very serious defect. It is not remedied by the citation of authorities in the footnotes, and when, as here, the footnotes are huddled inconveniently at the back of the book, the utility of the work for students is considerably diminished.

I have not attempted in this review to take note of individual erroneous details, such as the placing (p. 107) of Dingle in West Cork, or the description in Appendix II of T. F. Meagher as an advocate of slavery (this gave rise to a brisk controversy at the time of publication and has, I believe, been corrected in later printings). I have instead tried to see the book as a whole and to see it in relation to Irish historical scholarship. Despite what has been said about its analytical shortcomings it remains an incomparable narrative and will, I am sure, claim a multitude of readers in years to come. Students will go to The great hunger to find out what happened in the starving time and how it happened. But they will still turn to The great famine to know the reason why.

F. S. L. LYONS

THE CAMBRIDGE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF EUROPE. Vol. iii: ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION AND POLICIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Edited by M. M. Postan, E. E. Rich and Edward Miller. Pp. xiii, 696. Cambridge: University Press. 1963. 70s.

SOMEWHERE, no doubt, there may exist the ideal student for whom the Cambridge Histories are designed, but little in the many volumes of the various series leads one to believe that the contributors themselves have

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80 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

any clear idea of the audience they are trying to reach. The first two volumes of the Cambridge Economic History, however, seemed to have profited, to some extent at least, from the disastrous precedents of their predecessors in other fields. Those volumes, though uneven in quality as all such co-operative works must be, did contain some contributions of great originality and importance. One has only to recall the chapters by Marc Bloch in the first volume and those by Robert Lopez and Michael Postan in the second, to indicate the standards the History was capable of reaching, even if it only reached them spasmodically.

Confronted now with the third volume in the series, it is natural to compare it with the others. Like them, it is concerned with medieval Europe and in its scope it adheres very closely, according to Professor Postan, to the ground-plan laid down long ago by Sir John Clapham and Eileen Power. Such piety is perhaps excessive, if not actually misplaced. This new volume contains two parts, devoted respectively to economic organisation and to economic policies. The first of these covers three main topics--the rise of the towns, the organisation of trade, and markets and fairs. Each of these overlaps considerably with the contents of volume two, and it may reasonably be argued that the rather scrappy character of that volume might have been redeemed had these chapters been transferred to it en bloc. However, it is something to have them belatedly, though the first of them, Professor van Werveke's account of the rise of towns, is unfortunately the weakest in the book. In forty ill-organised pages he contrives to combine the minimum of stimulation with the maximum of platitude.

The real heart of the book lies in the second part. This begins with an admirable introduction by A. P. Hibbert to the economic policies of towns, followed, logically enough, by Sylvia Thrupp's extremely well-informed chapter on the guilds. This in turn leads to an extended treatment of the economic phases of government by several different hands - Edward Miller dealing with France and England, Professor van Werveke with the Low Countries, Professor Ldnnroth with the Baltic, and Professor Cipolla (qualifying very interestingly the views expressed by Lopez in the previous volume) with the Italian and Iberian peninsulas. The volume ends with a chapter on public credit, one on 'conceptions of economy and society', and an appendix on coinage and currency, this last hurriedly substituted for a more detailed treatment of which the editors were disappointed by a contributor's unexpected withdrawal.

In a short notice of such a large volume it is scarcely possible to do more than mention the contents. The individual contributions show, as usual, great variety of approach and execution. Some, the Belgian contributions, especially, are content to do little more than offer a conspectus of their several fields (displaying, incidentally, a remarkable fidelity to the theories of Henri Pirenne) while others, e.g. Professor de Rouver, writing on Italian trade, make effective use of new materials. An enterprise such as the Cambridge Economic History is, inevitably, bound by the circumstances of its production. However massive an individual volume may be, it has to cover so much ground that the component

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REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES 8I chapters can seldom be detailed enough to satisfy the interested reader. The essential purposes of such an enterprise must surely be two-fold: to make the student aware of the direction in which scholarly opinion is moving on the subjects under discussion, and, not less important, to plot a path for him through the mazes of recent research. The Cambridge Economic History has so far succeeded admirably in both these functions. The individual contributions are, on the whole, fair and accurate summaries of the present state of debate, while the bibliographies, selective though they may be, are of inestimable value to those wishing to pursue individual topics further. Where so much is provided, it would be churlish to ask for more.

F. S. L. LYONS

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. Vol. viii: SOUTH AFRICA. Second edition. Edited by Eric A. Walker. Pp. xxviii, 1087. Cambridge: University Press. 1963- £5.

Tins work, first published in 1936, has been out of print for several years. The appearance of a new edition under the general editorship of Professor E. A. Walker is an event of some importance, for this is still the most comprehensive survey of South African history to be found in a single volume. After providing a geographical, ethnological and historical background, it deals with all the people and territories south of the Zambesi from the age of Portuguese discovery up to the end of the first world war. Separate chapters are devoted to economic and cultural development, to the changes in native tribal life, to Roman- Dutch law and to the role of South Africa in the Empire. The elaborate, hundred-page bibliography, with its lists of source material available in Britain and in South Africa and its extensive selection of secondary works, is an invaluable guide.

And yet in many ways the book is disappointing. It is too faithful a reproduction of the first edition. So much of note has happened in South Africa since the beginning of the nineteen-twenties that the case for bringing the work more nearly up to date was surely overwhelming. To ignore the fateful constitutional changes, the rapid industrialization, the emergence of the Afrikaners, is to leave a serious void. Another consequence of adhering so rigidly to the original plan has been the exclusion of new topics. A chapter on the role of the Dutch Reformed Church or on the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, for example, would have been a welcome addition. The opportunity has been missed, too, of incorporating new material and of enlisting the services of new contributors. Two chapters and two sections of chapters have been rewritten in the light of recent research with the help of two new contributors, but the rest of the book remains substantially unaltered so that less regard than is desirable has been paid to the considerable output of South African historians since 1936. This is all the more serious in view of the unequal quality of the original essays. The least that might have been expected was a thorought revision of each

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