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There is a paradox about the beginning of European expansion in the fifteenth century. This was a time when Europe had only half its normal population, due to the ravages of the Black Death, 1347–52, and its successor epidemics. This essay attempts, first, to resolve some enduring mysteries about the Black Death: What was it? Where was it? How many people did it kill? It then argues that, counter-intuitively, plague had some positive effects on living standards and per capita trade. It also triggered significant restructuring in technology, politics, and socio-economy, which may actually have encouraged and facilitated European expansion.

“Squares” takes the reader to the historical core of the book. It sets its sights on the public appearance of measurement standards following Frederick I Barbarossa’s 1183 relinquishment of measurements as imperial prerogatives. This section also maps the progressive appearance of such displays through the Italian city-republics, together with the concurrent evolution of policing bodies, legislation, and citizens' responses. It discusses numerous typologies of monuments for the display of standards, from churches and governmental palaces to simple wooden rods. A key case, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s famous fresco "The Allegory of Good Government" in Siena, founds civic authority on measuring. What follows is not a straightforward story. Measurements moved across different urban institutions, often becoming the object of contention. Taking a more expansive view, this section describes these clashes while also showing the increasing discipline of both measurement checkers and their customers. A close reading of a novella by fourteenth-century writer Franco Sacchetti, however, reveals the failings of civic institutions in controlling standards and offers some points of reflection on the skewed relationship of measuring and justice, suggesting that what the standards can offer is only a promise of sameness.

This chapter draws some conclusions from the researches laid out in the previous chapter. It considers the extent of the Indian contribution to the inventory of medicinal substances in the early Islamic period, as well as how evidence of such contributions seems so scarce in comparison. The chapter also discusses the distribution of these drugs and how they were spurred on by ‘strong market forces’ — namely, the new trading routes and economic conditions created by the Arab conquests and their governmental policies. Literature and translations were just one way to transmit medical knowledge from the Classical to the Arab world and from there to the West; others were trade, diplomacy, pilgrimage, and waves of conquests. The chapter thus shows how the Arabs rendered a transformation of the entire medieval world, including the comprehensive dominance of Greek pharmacology along with Persian and Ayurvedic drugs.

This chapter introduces the third theme of the volume: the sources of Viking wealth. It presents a theoretical and methodological framework for ‘fingerprinting’ early medieval silver by archaeometric methods. A combined approach, integrating elemental (especially gold and bismuth) and lead isotope analysis, is advanced. The methods involved, including state-of-the-art laser ablation ICP-MS, are introduced, and the limitations of the approach clearly laid out. These methods are then used to evaluate the diffusion of silver produced at the mine of Melle (Aquitaine, France): a major source of silver coinage in the Frankish kingdoms, which the Vikings acquired through their raids in Aquitaine during the ninth century.

By late August 1270, the Tunis Crusade was in the hands of Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily. A long‐running battle for Syria had been transposed, not only into a different region, but seemingly into a different register. Like Charles, al‐Mustansir of Tunis tended to negotiate rather than fight across religious frontiers. But that dynamic was about to change. Charles and al‐Mustansir were facing each other at the head of large and fractious armies. The temptation to use the military force at their disposal would be strong, and not only because it could help them gain a better bargaining position. On both sides, there was mounting pressure to activate the conflict. To keep their divided armies together, Charles and al‐Mustansir might just have to use them. The negotiators were now in charge, but to get the settlement they wanted, they were going to have to fight for it first.