Craftsmen and Guilds in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Eva Jullien and Michel Pauly, eds. Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 235. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016. 316 pp. €54.
new forms of revenue. This enabled rulers in England, France, and the Italian city-states to fund war and dynastic adventurism. Concurrently, the strength of local power meant an extension in political engagement as communities of taxpayers asserted notions of consent and public good. However, Wickham stresses that sometimes the only outlet for this enhanced nonelite political antagonism was violence and revolt. Wickham’s medieval Europe is framed primarily by its structures, political and fiscal, with less attention paid to its cultural and religious contours. The occasional forays into surveying regions do include an analysis of Christianization and its effects in Ireland, England, Denmark, Norway, and Poland, where he downplays the cultural homogeneity of medieval Europe. There are also some interesting discursions in chapter 10 regarding female agency, lay literacy, urban identity, minorities, and revolts. However, it is clear that these subjects are not the focus of the book, being invariably aligned with broader points about economic change and the institutions of local power. Structural shifts resonate throughout the book, but Wickham ultimately highlights a notable continuity within Europe. The old Roman frontier along the Rhine-Danube remained important even by the end of the Middle Ages; the wealthier, more politically coherent states were still mostly south of this border. Nevertheless, in general, fifteenth-century Europe was the product of a millennium of change, most notably the growth of vernacular literacy, the strength of local politics that abutted an increasingly intrusive state, and the emergence of new forms of popular political engagement.