Work, Crafts, and the Medieval Economy

Work, Crafts, and the Medieval Economy explores the working lives of the people who built, fed, clothed, supplied, and sustained medieval society. Moving from farms and village workshops to bustling markets, mines, ports, guild halls, and construction sites, the book reveals how labor shaped everyday life between the fifth and fifteenth centuries. Farmers, blacksmiths, carpenters, weavers, bakers, sailors, miners, servants, merchants, women workers, and people surviving on the margins all emerge as essential participants in a complex and constantly changing economy.Beyond the familiar images of castles and knights, this book uncovers the practical world that made medieval civilization possible. It examines wages, prices, apprenticeships, guild regulation, dangerous occupations, commercial expansion, the effects of the Black Death, and the gradual rise of markets, banking, and wage labor. Moreover, this eighth book presents the Middle Ages through the hands of the people whose work transformed raw materials, generated wealth, and helped prepare Europe for the economic changes of the early modern world.

© 2026 Machain Santiago (Lydbog): 9798237852608

Udgivelsesdato

Lydbog: 3. oktober 2026