Julie L. Mell

The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender (eBook, PDF)

Volume I

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

This book challenges a common historical narrative, which portrays medieval Jews as moneylenders who filled an essential economic role in Europe. It traces how and why this narrative was constructed as a philosemitic narrative in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in response to the rise of political antisemitism. This book also documents why it is a myth for medieval Europe, and illuminates how changes in Jewish history change our understanding of European history. Each chapter offers a novel interpretation of central topics, such as the usury debate, commercial contracts, and moral literature on money and value to demonstrate how the revision of Jewish history leads to new insights in European history.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. Oktober 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781137397782
• Artikelnr.: 57007736

Autorenporträt

Julie Mell is an Assistant Professor of History and North Carolina State University.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: Jousting with Windmills PART I: MODERN HISTORY AND MEDIEVAL NARRATIVES 1. The Economic Function of the Jews: A Nineteenth-Century Story 2. Twentieth-Century Jewish Émigrés and Trajectories in European Economic History PART II: MERRY OLD ENGLAND: SOME FACTS 3. "Rich as a Jew"?: An Analysis of the Distribution of Wealth and Frequency of Moneylending in the Anglo-Norman Jewish Population 4. An Economic Function for the Crown?: On Tallage, Taxation, and the Legal Status of the Jews

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Chapter 1 The Discourse of Usury and the Jewish Usurer in medieval France.- .Chapter 2 Commercialization among the Jewish Merchants of Marseille.- .Chapter 3 From Gift Exchange to Profit Economy reconsidered: Towards a Cultural History of Money.- .Conclusion 'Which is the Merchant here? And which the Jew?'.

Rezensionen

"This book is a seriously adept piece of scholarship which I suspect (and hope) will become an instant classic for students of medieval Jews in general and of medieval Anglo-Jewry specifically." (Towards a Bibliography of Medieval Anglo-Jewry, anglo-jewishbibliography.blogspot.de, January, 2017)