KRISTOR writes:

I strongly second Dean Ericson’s recommendation of Henri Pirenne’s Mohammed and Charlemagne. It is one of the most important books of my intellectual history. I sort books that are successful, books I like, into two categories: those that extend or deepen my understanding, and those that revolutionize it. The former sorts of books generally work for me on account of their further clarification of insights gained from the latter sort. Of that latter, revolutionary sort, there are only a few. Pirenne’s is one. Pirenne’s genius lay in noticing the minutiae of life, and in understanding the profound impact that sudden changes therein could have. My favorite example from the book regards paper. Yes, paper. The commercial, intellectual, and civil life of Western Europe from the very beginnings of Roman conquest depended upon paper imported from Egypt. If you think about it for half a moment, you realize that the Roman Empire was a vast bureaucracy, supporting a vast network of commercial and financial enterprises. All of it ran on paper. And, until Europeans figured out how to pulp wood, that meant it was utterly dependent upon Egyptian papyrus. This is one reason why conquering Egypt was so important to the peoples of the Fertile Crescent, to the Greeks, and to the Romans. 

Well, when Islam conquered Egypt, the Roman Empire’s supply of paper was suddenly cut off. It doesn’t sound like a very big deal. But think: what would happen to our civilization if our supply of paper suddenly dropped to, say 2 percent of what it is today, overnight? It would be chaos. It would be like the disaster that would overtake us if a thermonuclear device were detonated in the skies over North America, frying all our electronics. We’d be in deep, deep trouble. 

The whole Roman Empire immediately fell into a profound economic depression. The resulting crash of Imperial tax revenues resulted in huge cuts in the military budget, so that the northern borders became porous. The situation was exacerbated when North Africa and Iberia fell to Islam, because despite the best efforts of the Byzantine Navy, the Western Med was no longer Mare Romanum. It was beset by Muslim pirates, and maritime trade crashed. Not only that, but Muslim coastal raiders repeatedly conquered coastal seaports in France and Italy, and when they were dislodged by Frankish rescue operations, razed them. They held Sicily and most of southern Italy for several centuries (they were finally dislodged from Sicily just a few decades before the First Crusade, by Norman knights). With the disappearance of trade in Gaul, commerce was, for the first time in centuries, no longer a good bet for an enterprising, intelligent, well-born young man. Unless he was first in line of inheritance, there were only two alternatives open to him: holy orders, or soldiery. Most chose the latter (fortunately for our civilization!). For warriors, school learning is an expensive luxury. So, outside the Church, learning crashed. Thus it was that all – all – of the bureaucrats running Charlemagne’s Empire were, literally, clerks – clerics. Thus it was that the biggest commercial enterprise in medieval France was a monastery: Cluny. The monks were the only ones with the intellectual equipment necessary to trade. This, in part, explains why the theory of finance, capital, banking, insurance, accounting – in a word, economics – was hammered out first by Franciscans.    

Pirenne covers all this ground, and more. His data: such things as the bills of lading and invoices kept in the files of contemporary monasteries. These provide a concrete accounting of the economic crash in paper, gold, oil, candles, you name it.  Having read his book, my basic reaction is that it is a miracle that the Europeans prevailed against their enemies.   

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