The Donkey and The Boat: The Economic Logic of Medieval Societies

BRIHC is very pleased to welcome back Professor Chris Wickham (University of Oxford, emeritus) to discuss his new book, The Donkey and the Boat, with a mixed panel of medieval historians, including Professor Alice Rio (King’s College, London), Dr James Norrie, and Dr Katharine Sykes (Birmingham). 

The Donkey and the Boat is a new history of the Mediterranean economy of the Central Middle Ages, drawing upon vast documentary and archaeological datasets to reconstruct the internal dynamics of discrete regional economies of the Mediterranean, Byzantium and the Islamic world  between the tenth and the twelfth centuries. Professor Wickham eschews fashionable explanations in terms of globalisation to offer a richly evidenced interpretation of the economic logic that determined their growing connectedness (the clue is in the title!). To find out more, you are most welcome to join our conversation.