The donkey and the boat: rethinking Mediterranean economic expansion in the eleventh century [VIDEO RECORDING]

Even today, people tend to see the great central medieval trade cycle in the Mediterranean as dominated by Italian cities and the luxury trade focussed in Venice - and on great ships.

In Professor Chris Wickham's BRIHC Annual Lecture, the focus will change to local and regional exchange - more often carried by donkeys - and will use Egypt as a starting-point, rather than Italy. The way economic change took place in a long eleventh century was locally-based before it was international. in this lecture, we will look at how.

Chris Wickham is Honorary Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Birmingham, Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. His research focuses on Medieval Italy and the ways that European society changed from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages; he has pioneered comparative socio-economic analysis in this period.

Wickham won the Wolfson History Prize for his book Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800, and was awarded the Serena Medal by the British Academy "in recognition of his reputation as a medieval historian of exceptional distinction who has transformed our understanding of the early medieval Italian world."

Chris spent nearly thirty years of his career at the University of Birmingham and it is a great honour to welcome him back to give BRIHC's first Annual Lecture.