The Overseas Trade of Boston, 1279–1548.Stephen H.Rigby and Robert C.Nash, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage, 2023. Pp. 135. ISBN 9783412526580. Pbk €32/$35).
本书结合专著与原始档案，分析英国波士顿港从14世纪初的领先地位到16世纪衰落的过程，并论证中世纪海关记录的可靠性，适合研究中世纪英国贸易与海关制度的学者参考。
This slim volume is an important contribution to the scholarship of England's medieval customs records, a subfield which owes much to this book's publisher, the Hansischen Geschichtsverein (Hanseatic History Association).Rigby and Nash's volume, from the Quellen und Darstellungen zur Hansischen Geschichte (Sources and Monographs on Hanseatic History) series, combines a short monograph analysing and contextualizing Boston's trade statistics from the enrolled customs accounts with a full edition of the 1386-7 particular (detailed) account of tonnage and poundage (the basic general custom on miscellaneous goods), by way of sample of those which survive for the town.The volume offers a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the operation of the English medieval customs system, along with a thorough analysis of Boston's decline from having been one of England's leading ports in the early fourteenth century to one of minor significance in the sixteenth.England's medieval customs accounts are unrivalled for their extent, scope, and extensive survival, but historians have been understandably wary about the extent to which they can be relied upon.The first chapter makes a solid case for the trustworthiness of the customs accounts as a source, both generally and with specific reference to the practical context and specific arrangements of Boston, as a head port, and its minor 'limbs'.While imperfect, it was a system that evolved numerous checks and balances.The labyrinthine rules, changing rates, and exemptions are more of a problem than evasion or corruption for the economic historian trying to use the accounts.The bulk of the volume is taken up with a thorough analysis of the long-term trends revealed in the enrolled accounts for Boston.The enrolled accounts are the second stage of the two-step process, recording only summary data of total volumes of commodities eligible for the various different rates each Exchequer year.Broad categories of goods, and respective custom, are dealt with in turn, from wool exports 1279-1548 to wine imports 1322-1548.Each section includes an abstracted summary table of annual totals, line charts illustrating the trends (impressively, for this kind of publication, provided in colour), and a contextual analysis detailing the vagaries of policy, rates, exemptions, and external factors relevant to these trends.The full Exchequer