The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180

Review

"Genuinely field-changing" -- Hannah Skoda, Books of the Year 2023, BBC History Magazine"An impressive book that turns the history of the Mediterranean upside down...an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging reinterpretation of the Mediterranean...a monumental achievement that fully deserves to take its place among classic studies of Mediterranean history." -- David Abulafia, Times Literary Supplement"The Donkey and the Boat is an impressive book that turns the history of the Mediterranean upside down...The Donkey and the Boat is an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging reinterpretation of the Mediterranean at a crucial point in its revival, after the relatively quiet centuries that some of us, though not Chris Wickham, still call the fall of the Roman Empire. Confidently crossing back and forth between the Christian East and West and the Islamic world, his book is a monumental achievement that fully deserves to take its place among classic studies of Mediterranean history." -- David Abulafia, Times Literary Supplement"The Donkey and the Boat is a comprehensive and groundbreaking study. Wickham argues that our understanding of this period has been hampered by outdated assumptions and restricted data sets. It is a major contribution to an understanding of the Mediterranean economy during the Middle Ages and is highly recommended to readers with an interest in this field of study." -- Richard Tuttle, University of Edinburgh, World History Encyclopedia"The Donkey and the Boat is an impressive book that turns the history of the Mediterranean upside down...The Donkey and the Boat is an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging reinterpretation of the Mediterranean at a crucial point in its revival, after the relatively quiet centuries that some of us, though not Chris Wickham, still call the fall of the Roman Empire. Confidently crossing back and forth between the Christian East and West and the Islamic world, his book is a monumental achievement that fully deserves to take its place among classic studies of Mediterranean history." -- David Abulafia, Times Literary Supplement"Nothing short of impressive...a must read" -- Tobias Daniels, Sehepunkte"Punchy, eye-wateringly ambitious, and occasionally amusing, The Donkey & The Boat will set the benchmark for debate on this subject for many years to come." -- Nicholas Morton, Engelsberg Ideas"Brilliant... the sheer depth of [Wickham's] research and the breadth of his insights warrants close attention." -- Nicholas Morton, Books of the Year 2023, Engelsberg Ideas"This book is going to become a game changer and an unavoidable point of reference and discussion in the research on medieval economic growth in the next years." -- Davide Cristoferi, Continuity and Change"It is not every day that one encounters a book that aims to overturn a paradigm and establish in its place the foundations of a new one; rarer still is it to find that the author succeeds in that task. But that is exactly what Chris Wickham achieves in his mammoth new book." -- Robert Portass, World Archaeology"It is not every day that one encounters a book that aims to overturn a paradigm and establish in its place the foundations of a new one; rarer still is it to find that the author succeeds in that task. But that is exactly what Chris Wickham achieves in his mammoth new book." -- Robert Portass, World Archaeology"To be sure, the world needs scholarly tomes like this one." -- Jonathan P. Conant, Early Medieval Europe"Chris Wickham's monumental The Donkey and the Boat comprises nothing less than a thorough and systematic reconsideration of a pivotal era in the economy of the premodern West- a project prompted by the author's "intense dissatisfaction with the traditional narratives of the 'commercial revolution' of the central middle ages in Europe and the Mediterranean, and above all its origins". ..In sum, The Donkey and the Boat is a once-in-a-generation book-erudite, encyclopedic, and revisionist. It is grounded thoroughly in an abundance of data and a critical reassessment of the scholarship that has gone before it." -- Brian A. Catlos, Speculum

About the Author

Chris Wickham, Chichele Professor of medieval history emeritus, University of OxfordChris Wickham taught at Birmingham for nearly thirty years before moving to Oxford as Chichele Professor in 2005. He was Head of Department from 2009 to 2012, and Head of the Humanities Division in 2015 and 2016. He returned to Birmingham as pasrt-time Professor of Medieval History from 2016 until his retirement in 2021. He was Director of the British School at Rome in 2020-2021.