Wirtschaft, Krieg und Seelenheil

This stimulating and wide-ranging book focuses on the execution and impact of the ‘trade ban’ (‘Handelsverbot’) enforced by Catholic powers in the hope of weakening and ultimately destroying the Hussite movement that in 1419/20 had freed Bohemia from allegiance to pope and king and threatened the ruling elites of Christendom ever since. The impact of the trade ban on the Hussites is contested: some scholars credit it with crippling the Bohemian economy by the mid-1430s, while others argue that it had no impact at all. Kaar’s book shows the economic initiative in a new light by assessing the enterprise from two interlinked perspectives: as an instrument of war (‘als instrumentelles Kriegsmittel’) and as a symbolic and communicative process (‘als symbolisch-kommunikativer Prozess’). Armed with these two interpretative approaches, and drawing upon significant archival research, Kaar comes to fresh conclusions about the operation of the trade ban and the political, economic and

Art · Historical and Archaeological Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Medieval European History and Architecture