Sample paper topics for the first paper assignment from the last several years in which the course has been taught.
1. Henri Pirenne argued in his now classic 1925 work Medieval Cities (Princeton University Press, 1969/1925) that there was a complete break between the socio-economic developments of late antiquity and those of the High Middle Ages. Furthermore, he dated this break squarely in the 5th-9th centuries and associated it with the rise of Islam in the eastern and southern Mediterranean regions. Evaluate the evidence for and against this proposition.
2. A distinct medieval agricultural practice emerged only very slowly in trans-alpine Europe in the centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Discuss the relative influence of Roman and Germanic traditions upon this development.
3. Georges Duby argues in his book The Early Growth of the European Economy (Cornell University Press, 1974) that "what constituted the real basis of wealth at that time was not ownership of land but power over men" (p. 13). Use evidence drawn from the readings to test this proposition for the period of the early Middle Ages (roughly the 5th through the 9th centuries). Be sure to think carefully about the various ways in which we understand the term 'wealth.'
Generally I do not assign specific questions for the second paper, but rather encourage students to come up with an essay topic on their own connected in some way to the complex of historiographical issues associated with the medieval pandemic of bubonic plague. They can do anything from selecting a primary source document to analyze in detail to thinking rather more abstractly about the connections between the 'natural' environment and human social and economic organization.
Economic historians have long been fascinated with the question of why the 'west,' after a late start by most measures, moved ahead of its eastern rivals in the early modern period in the long race of economic development. In 1981 Eric Jones, in a book titled
The European Miracle (Cambridge University Press), argued that political culture made all the difference. He claimed that Europe [in contrast to East and Central Asian empires] had avoided the "plunder machine" and that "European kings were never as absolute" as their Asiatic counterparts. Others have argued instead that Europe enjoyed a much more benevolent demographic regime, i.e., that it was not nearly so overpopulated as its eastern rivals, and enjoyed lower mortality as well. Indeed, Jared Diamond's work suggests that Europe enjoyed a more benevolent environmental context in virtually every respect. Recently, the eminent Harvard historian David Landes has argued in his book
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (W.W. Norton, 1998) that "if we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference." (This comes at the close of a 500 page tour de force of world history.) Douglas North, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, has argued that the west had better institutions, like an open market and secure private property rights. Joel Mokyr and many others have posited the west's ultimately superior technology (and science too). The latest round of debate has centered on trade and in particular the merits of the "Atlantic Economy," including a recent paper coauthored by a MIT faculty member Daron Acemoglu titled "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic Growth" (NBER Working Paper No. w9378, December 2002).
Choose at least one of these broad theories about the origins of the European success story and assess it in the context of the material we have read and talked about this semester. You need not attempt to answer fully the big question posed at the outset. Rather just find a piece of the puzzle which can be tackled given the reading you have done and reflect on the implications of the evidence you have seen so far. In particular, be thinking about the themes we have covered most recently, that is, the expansion of trade networks, the rise of consumer culture, the insights provided by historical demography, and the politics of mercantilism.