ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the medieval world trade system focusing on pepper and the Eastern Mediterranean and showing how some of the primary sources and methods outlined in the previous sections can be applied to a specific research problem. It suggests this means that scholars have to step out of their narrower professional speciality, e.g. in certain types of text, and consider a wider array of sources and methods in an interdisciplinary manner. The chapter provides a brief summary of the pepper trade following in the wake of pepper travelling from the Indian Malabar coast to England, on the way discussing the various sources informing us about it. Pepper exists in many varieties, and it is important for the economic historian to know what they are actually dealing with. The chapter discusses problems of interpreting these sources between qualitative and quantitative approaches.
