Unlike most modern multi-authored historical surveys, this work is not mere synthesis, but in many of its 51 chapters (by 39 contributors, many highly distinguished) breaks new ground or suggests new interpretations of known data. It is, moreover, the first attempt to discuss in any substantial form the various economic facets of the Byzantine Empire. Angeliki Laiou, a sometime Director of Dumbarton Oaks, is to be congratulated on master-minding a project whose importance can hardly be exaggerated.

Although the Roman Empire was ruled from Constantinople as early as A.D. 324, the chronological span of these volumes begins in the seventh century both because it was only then that most of the distinctive features of the mediaeval empire were in place and also because the “late antique period” has been covered in great detail by A. H. M. Jones's magisterial The Late Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (2 vols., Oxford, 1964). Sensibly, however, two chapters deal with the sixth century, one discussing evidence unknown to Jones and more recent interpretations, the other being a case-study (a useful and repeated aspect of the whole work) of an individual city, Anemourion.

After two introductory chapters the work is divided into six parts. The first concerns “The Natural Environment, Resources, Communications, and Production Techniques” (nine chapters), and includes a brave attempt by Laiou at once more estimating the population of the empire at different periods, while the techniques discussed are those of agriculture, mining, metallurgy, stone-working, and textiles. The second is that on the sixth century. The third, “Structures, Organization, and Development of Production” (21 chapters), includes, among more obvious subjects, further information on techniques in artistic media and the production of books, glass, and pottery (unfortunately appearing too late for consideration are the important works by Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Julie A. Lauffenburger, eds., A Lost Art Rediscovered: The Architectural Ceramics of Byzantium [Baltimore and University Park, PA: Walters Art Gallery and Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001] and Ken Dark, Byzantine Pottery [Stroud: Tempus, 2001]). This part includes also valuable case-studies of Sardis, Pergamon, Thebes, Athens, Corinth, Kherson, Preslav, and Turnovo. The fourth part, “Exchange, Trade, and Markets” (seven chapters), includes a valuable study with many tables by Cécile Morrisson and Jean-Claude Cheynet on prices and wages and the special topics of Monemvasia and Shipwrecks. The fifth, “Economic Institutions and the State,” consists of chapters on the production and circulation of money, monetary mechanisms, an especially important study by the late Nicolas Oikonomides on the role of the state in the economy, and five (three by Eleutheria Papagianni) on legal aspects of the economy. Part 6 consists solely of two chapters by Laiou, on “Economic Thought and Ideology” and an all too brief overview. The work is lavishly supplemented by 129 black-and-white illustrations and 32 in color (generally quite excellent), including 37 of maps, a few of which are rather bizarrely colored and for which there is no index, as there is not for the numerous tables or for modern scholars mentioned. The two indexes provided are “Thematic” (very useful indeed) and “General” (selective and mainly of personal and topographic names and Greek terms). There is no general bibliography, but many chapters conclude with their own, while for others readers are left to hunt through the notes.

The length of this review precludes any detailed criticism, but this reviewer thinks that a few points should be made. He would have liked a more detailed examination of the economic and political effects on Byzantium of the Italian mercantile states' increasing hold on Mediterranean trade in later centuries. He was surprised also that the economic effects of slavery are largely ignored. Even though after the sixth century Byzantium was not as dependent upon slavery as in late antiquity (see the role of slavery in A. H. M. Jones's work), yet there were clearly still large numbers in the middle Byzantine period, which cannot but have had economic implications. However, apart from a detailed table on the purchase prices of slaves from the tenth to the fifteenth century they are vouchsafed only six usually cursory mentions. He believes that an essay trying to estimate levels of literacy and numeracy, admittedly a notoriously difficult task, would have made an important contribution to certain economic considerations. He thinks also that insufficient notice was taken of Eastern European scholarship such as that of Alexander Kazhdan before his move to the West. M. F. Hendy's Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy c. 300–1450 (Cambridge, 1985), signally mentioned by Laiou and the nearest previous approach to a synthesis of the Byzantine economy, also retains its importance and is indeed an essential adjunct to the present work.

The Economic History of Byzantium will remain for many years an indispensable source of reference for all interested in Byzantium and, owing to its frequent comparisons with western Europe and references to the Islamic world, in mediaeval economies in general. It should, moreover, have an even wider audience, as Byzantium is an early and fascinating case of the government of a large state attempting to direct and control many aspects of its own economy. But the work is more than merely a source of reference: its new interpretations will provoke further study, and its admissions of ignorance will give young scholars a plethora of virgin subjects to pursue (notable in this respect is Anthony Bryer's “The Means of Agricultural Production: Muscle and Tools,” the first part of which is largely a list of questions with suggestions of where to look for the answers).