What is Borsch’sBorsch’s main argument?
The Black Death in Egypt and England Borsch gives an insight into the wave of plague that decimated people from China to Iceland. As the countries tried to restore themselves, there was a huge difference between the eastern part where they experienced a long term economic and social decline and the west side where they experienced technological and other social innovations, which explains Europe’sEurope’s dominance in the 20th century. Borsch main idea was to demonstrate the demographic results of the Black Death, which were almost diametrically opposite in two countries. Unlike other studies that focus on the differences in Islam and Christianity to explain the puzzle, Borsch suggests that the nation’s system of landholding which helped them recover from the calamity of the Black Death. He compares the different cases in Egypt and England. These country’s economies were based in agriculture, and their gross domestic products were equivalent before the plague happened. Borsch analyses the medieval economic data to explain the centralization of Egypt and why the landholding system was unable to adapt to a massive depopulation while on the other side, England was able to localize and their rural landholding system fully recovered come the year 1500.
What is Borsch’sBorsch’s evidence?
The author uses evidence from different sources. However, most of the data which he used as evidence is acquired primarily. Specifically, a significant amount of the data is from the Arabic data, which he discovered in his research. The craftsmen wages and the grain prices are gotten from the farmer’s publications. Borsch calculations are based on a variety of evidence, including deriving information from later documents and records from 1597 to the nineteenth century. Which providing his main comparison which he uses the GDP of England between the year 1300 and 1526 which he derived the data from Mayhem’sMayhem’s article where he had speculated, however, in mayhem’s article there was no evidence supplied.
What are some aspects? Borsch’s book that reviewers have praised?
Sheldon Watts praises Borsch for going the extra mile of learning the Arabic language to be able to read the medieval documents which he finds in the archives. He praised him for his achievements and his dedication to the research by investing a lot of time and resources. However, the most notable praises the fact that Borsch found the importance and the value of unpublished information, especially from the ministry of the religious endowments, which was created instead of the landholding class. Based on his efforts, Munro states that this book deserves to be used in the economic history literature and that despite the criticisms that it has, Borsch has provided a lot of valuable, unique, and interesting historical evidence in the picture.
In this book, Borsch provides a comparative study that gives insight into the nature of the historical problems which might have been ignored by focusing on a single country or by religion. His book defies the laws of comparative study that researchers and historians must be experts in more than one field for them to provide the insights to specialization.
What are some aspects of Borsch sBorsch’s book that reviewers have criticized?
Cohn criticizes the fact that Borsch does not make any attempts to compare the descriptions of the plague by contemporary both in England and Egypt or even analyze the epidemiological similarities and differences. He states it’sit’s only in the first pages where the disease is discussed; Cohn describes this as an under searched aspect of the book.
Borsch comparative study analyses the real outputs and wages in the English and Egyptian economies. These analyses involve the prices, values, and outputs, which are measured in grams and pure silver. Although there are cases in comparative study when there is no other alternative while using them, we cannot compare the different levels of nominal value of two completely different accounts of money. More so, the changes in Egypt have not been critically explained and explored in the text.
Another issue which id criticized in the book is the fact that the author was aware of the controversies which surround the use of silver values. However, he still does not take into account the other two objections. One, while seeking to compensate for the impacts of coinage debasements, the use of silver gram values alters the changes based on assumptions that the expansion of the money supply is directly proportional to the percentage coinage in silver contents of the coinage and also that inflation is directly proportional to the increase in money flow while adopting the fallacy theory of money. The second objection is that the purchasing power of the silver stays the same (stagnates) for long when, in reality, it changes radically.
Also, in his final observation, his conclusions are based, and accord to the standard Ricardo model, strangely enough, is not mentioned in the book. The reviewer believes that for the author to conclude with this model, he should have at least mentioned it somewhere in the text.
Do you think that Borsch’s argument is a good one?
I think the author should be commended for the vast and considerable research that he collects, with its shortcomings, as compared to other historians of that time in England. Although the research is extensive, and I agree with a majority of the analyses, it’s based on scarce reliable evidence. I believe that this comparative economic history is not the strongest suit of Borsch; however, I commend his contributions in the Mamluk economic history.