ABSTRACT
Historians of the European economy may not feel it indispensable to complete their professional formation with the Grand Tour to Italy, which is what Dr Johnson really meant by ‘seeing the Mediterranean’. The story of the involvement of at least some parts of the Mediterranean littoral in major European developments might start very early on indeed: with the migration of early hominins ‘out of Africa’, the diffusion of Indo-European languages, or the advance of agriculture. It was the eclipse of the Mediterranean commercial economy that allowed northern Europe, with its economic and political heartland the empire of Charlemagne, to begin to grow. On the return journey to Europe, several years later, the companions paused at the volcanic island off the coast of Sicily to inspect the crater through which the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric, had supposedly been cast down into hell. The ‘Origins of the European Economy’ are to be found precisely in this trans-Mediterranean exchange.
