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The Organization of Exchange in Early Christian Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Marilyn Gerriets
Marilyn Gerriets
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 1C0, Canada
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Abstract

The major contrast between preindustrial and modern economies is that the latter enjoy regular and rapid growth, whereas income per capita tends to stagnate in the former. Analysis of the organization of exchange in early Christian Ireland shows that the exchange and therefore the production of material wealth was so thoroughly integrated into securing and exercising power, as well as into establishing and maintaining family and social ties, that any improvements in technology which might have led to economic growth would inevitably have generated prohibitive social costs.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 171 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1981

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References

1 Polanyi, Karl, “The Semantics of Money-Uses,” in Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi, ed. Dalton, George (New York, 1968), pp. 175–203.Google ScholarDalton, George, ed., Tribal and Peasant Economies, (Garden City, N.Y., 1967).Google Scholar

2 Binchy, Daniel, ed., Crith Gablach, [Branched purchase] (Dublin, 1941), lines 324–25, 409–10.Google ScholarThurneysen, Rudolf, “Irisches Recht. Zu den unteren Ständen in Irland: Fuidir,” Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft, Philosophisch-historische Klasse 2 (1931), p. 63.Google ScholarIbid, “Aus dem irischen Recht: Das Frei-Lehen,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 15 (1924), 238–76. Thurneysen, Rudolf, “Aus dem irischen Recht: Das Unfrei-Lehen,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 14 (1923), 335–94.Google Scholar

3 The dispersal of cattle did serve an economic function by reducing an individual's risk of losing his entire herd to disease, cattle raids, and the like.

4 Thurneysen, “Das Unfrei-Lehen,” p. 361. Binchy, ed., Crith Gablach, lines 159–60.Google Scholar

5 Binchy, ed., Crith Gablach, lines 89–97, 153–58.Google Scholar

6 Binchy, Daniel, ed., Corpus Iurus Hibernici (Dublin, 1978), p. 222, line 7ff.Google ScholarThurneysen, Rudolf, “Cáin Lanamna: Die Regelung der Paars,” in Studies in Early Irish Law, ed. Binchy, Daniel (Dublin, 1936), p. 49.Google Scholar

7 References to these payments are found throughout the laws. For example, Binchy, ed., Crith Gablach, lines 121–25, 209–20.Google Scholar

8 Binchy, ed., Crith Gablach, lines 89–97, 153–58.Google Scholar

9 Meyer, Kuno, “Bretha airechta” [Judgments of the legal assembly], Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 13 (1919), 20.Google ScholarBinchy, Daniel, “Bretha Déin Cécht” [Judgments of Déin Cécht], Eriu, 20 (1966), pp. 24, 26, 32, 34.Google ScholarIdem, Corpus Iuris Hibernici, p. 555, lines 19–24.Google Scholar

10 Polanyi, Karl, “Semantics.”Google Scholar

11 Binchy, , “Bretha Déin Cécht,” pp. 26, 28, 61.Google Scholar

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13 Binchy, ed., Crith Gablach, lines 160–61, 450–-51.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., lines 121–-24.

15 Thurneysen, “Das Unfrei-Lehen,” p. 342.Google Scholar

16 Compare Crith Gablach, lines 109–11 with lines 160 and 203.

17 Ibid., lines 256–-64. Binchy, ed., Corpus Iuris Hibernici, p. 1594, line 5ff., and p. 1606, lines 33–-38.

18 Douglas, Mary, “Raffia Cloth Distribution in the Lele Economy” (in Dalton, ed., Tribal and Peasant Economies) describes a society in which raffia cloth is used to make a variety of payments important to an individual's status. In this case the young men who need to accumulate raffia cloth for payments rarely weave it, but instead manipulate social obligations to obtain the cloth.Google Scholar