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THE EDGE OF THE WORLD: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE NORTH SEA AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Michael Pye | 360 pages | 17 Jan 2017 | PEGASUS BOOKS | 9781605986999 | English | New York, United States The Edge of the World Related Searches. Nobody asked questions, nobody demanded money. Villagers lied, covered up, procrastinated, and concealed, but most Villagers lied, covered up, procrastinated, and concealed, but most importantly they welcomed. This is the story of an isolated community in the upper reaches of the Loire Valley that conspired to save the lives of View Product. A Rope from the Sky: The Making and. The birth of South Sudan was celebrated world-wide, a triumph acclaimed not only by its long-oppressed people, but by three presidents and millions Part memoir, part feminist manifesto, Amazon Woman shows what incredible feats we are capable of and will encourage people, especially The riveting untold story behind the meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik The riveting untold story behind the meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik to stop the nuclear arms race. Henri Bergson was a French professor and philosopher. Born in Paris in to a Born in Paris in to a Polish composer and Yorkshire woman of Irish descent, his revelatory ideas of life as ceaseless transformation and the importance of attention, learning, humor and joy Log In Sign Up. Download Free PDF. The Edge of the World. Olivier Walther. The Edge of the World tells the story of Europe before states were strong enough to control the movement of people and goods and impose exclusive national identities. Living between the Franks in the west and the Saxons in the east, the Frisians developed long-distance trade routes, spreading the use of money across the North Sea. The Vikings did not limit their incursions to the coasts of the North Sea. They ravaged England, Ireland, and much of the rest of Europe that was accessible to their warships, ventur- ing to such distant places as Iceland, Constantinople, Greenland, and the New World, which they called Vineland. Pushing the limits of the known world, the Vikings brought disruptions and greater circulation to Europe. After the dust of the pillages had settled came a time of settlements and trade. Many cities in Ireland and Britain bear the marks of their Norse conquerors. As the cities in Northern Italy, the Hansa cities became powers without flags, seals or kings. At the edge of a world where territorial powers had remained fragmented, they lived from the sea and established a sophisticated network of trade posts from which mer- chants competed, using violence and threats in order to keep trade routes open. Nowhere in the book does the author succumb to the temptation of environmental deter- minism. The Frisians of the 7—10th centuries, for example, built artificial dwelling mounds called Terpen to protect themselves from the fury of the sea and developed markets where herders and farmers could use coins to trade their pro- ducts. Later on, flood mitigation and land-drainage became even more substantial and contrib- uted to the propagation of capitalism in the Low Countries. The Frisians, and then other groups along the Dutch and Flemish coasts, heaped soil up into artificial hills and used dams and dikes to reclaim land from the sea and rivers. The reclaimed land was good for pasturing, which led to the herding of cows and then to another Dutch innovation, cleanliness, because butter- and cheese-making demanded it. These coastal peoples did business with one another. Their activity required a currency to give relative value to various goods, so the participants resurrected the Roman practice of using coin money. Later, the first stock exchanges came into being in this part of Europe. Pye devotes a good chunk of his book to the boogeymen of medieval Europe, the Vikings. They enriched themselves, and in time their innovations were adopted by others. The cities that participated in the Hanseatic League — which ranged around the North and Baltic Seas and made free-trading alliances with little regard for national boundaries — are prime evidence for this argument. On the contrary, he has made such a compelling case that I would have welcomed more development of these far-flung connections. Now the critically acclaimed Michael Pye reveals the cultural transformation sparked by those men and women: the ideas, technology, science, law, and moral codes that helped create our modern world. This is the magnificent lost history of a thousand years. It was on the shores of the North Sea where experimental science was born, where women first had the right to choose whom they married; there was the beginning of contemporary business transactions and the advent of the printed book. In The Edge of the World, Michael Pye draws on an astounding breadth of original source material to illuminate this fascinating region during a pivotal era in world history. He won various prizes in Modern History at Oxford before working as a journalist, columnist, and broadcaster in London and New York. He now divides his time between London and rural Portugal. Table of Contents Introduction 1 1 The invention of money 27 2 The book trade 48 3 Making enemies 69 4 Settling 96 5 Fashion 6 Writing the law 7 Overseeing nature 8 Science and money 9 Dealers rule 10 Love and capital 11 The plague laws 12 The city and the world References Acknowledgements Index Related Searches. Nobody asked questions, nobody demanded money. Villagers lied, covered up, procrastinated, and concealed, but most Villagers lied, covered up, procrastinated, and concealed, but most importantly they welcomed. This is the story of an isolated community in the upper reaches of the Loire Valley that conspired to save the lives of View Product. A Rope from the Sky: The Making and. He is looking at archaeological evidence that shows a much more gradual takeover, involving centuries of peaceable trade and commingling. Much of the story Pye reports involves money and the making of it. The people he writes about lived marginal lives; they inhabited the marshy and unpredictable coastal lands that kings and noble families tended to stay clear of. They learned to do things on their own, as individuals. The Frisians, and then other groups along the Dutch and Flemish coasts, heaped soil up into artificial hills and used dams and dikes to reclaim land from the sea and rivers. The reclaimed land was good for pasturing, which led to the herding of cows and then to another Dutch innovation, cleanliness, because butter- and cheese-making demanded it. These coastal peoples did business with one another. Their activity required a currency to give relative value to various goods, so the participants resurrected the Roman practice of using coin money. Later, the first stock exchanges came into being in this part of Europe. Again, no mention. Pye talks a lot about the British Isles and Ireland, as well as the cities that currently make up Belgium and the Netherlands, and northern France, and the trade routes that connected them. If it were not for the Vikings, Saxons, and Frisians, those would not exist. Dec 12, Esther rated it liked it. This is a rich book but nevertheless somewhat disappointing. The overarching ideas in the book, summarised in the final pages are highly relevant and very interesting, but they are hidden in a deluge of small facts, people and ideas. In one chapter fashion, money and monks are coming along. Some topics could have been left out fashion and others elaborated more upon Hansen cities , I would have liked that better. Jun 16, Frank Capria rated it did not like it. Like many others I was very disappointed with this book. Aside from failing to convincingly prove his thesis, the writing is deadly. Pye states the obvious repeatedly just as that professor of history whose course you would have dropped after the first lecture if it was not required. The gaps in the narrative leave the reader wondering if the Vikings actually did sail off the edge of the earth because they simply disappear. I cannot recommend this book to anyone. View 1 comment. May 10, Jeffrey Howard rated it it was ok Shelves: history-european. If it weren't for the subject matter I would give this book a single star. Pye begins with a promising premise and ultimately falls short of it, majorly. He attempts to tell the tale of Northern Europe where "identity became a matter of where you were and where you last came from, not some abstract notion of race; peoples were not separated sharply as they were by nineteenth-century frontiers, venturing out only to conquer or be conquered. Indeed, quite often they ventured out to change sides. I If it weren't for the subject matter I would give this book a single star. Instead of dark mistakes about pure blood, racial identity, homogenous nations with their own soul and spirit and distinct nature, we have something far more exciting: the story of people making choices, not always freely, sometimes under fearsome pressure, but still choosing and inventing and making lives for themselves. Unfortunately, his book is poorly organized, and disjointed. He meanders through a patchwork of stories, commentary, and details that don't appear to be threaded together by any central thesis. He jumps from one century to another, from one historical figure to the next and ends a chapter without connecting it to his ultimate premise. The reader is left wondering, how the hell did this end up shaping modern Europe? He doesn't connect the dots and doesn't make a convincing case.

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