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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 4249783, member: 93416&quot;]I would like to say a few positive things about Canadian academia - and note - in parts this is very well sourced……….</p><p><br /></p><p>As a youngster I became convinced that changes in denomination structure, for instance the move to gold coin in later medieval Europe, were not due to “bullion famines” so much as political changes. I spent a great deal of time writing a paper for a top journal defending that idea. The editor clearly thought my piece was juvenilia. Meanwhile I thought his referee was a fool. (I judge now - we were both right).</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyhow, later I came across a paper by a Canadian prof, Andrew M. Watson, who made the same point as me, but in a very much more sophisticated way. His paper was “Back to Gold – and Silver”. It rather clearly seemed to attacked ideas previously defended by Lopez at Yale.</p><p><br /></p><p>Watson’s conclusions in 1967 seemed correct to me, but they had subsequently been ignored both in the USA by Day, and in the UK by Spufford. I tried to debate Spufford on this at a meeting of the Royal, but he apologised for a no-show. Anyhow, in the days before the internet – that was as far as I got.</p><p><br /></p><p>When the internet appeared I discovered that Watson had had a long career after 1967, but studying vegetables. And I found he was still alive (he still is) and contacted him. As I recall the bare facts he gave me ran like this. Immediately after writing the 1967 paper he was called to the Dean’s office at Toronto, and given a Ford Foundation grant to study vegetables instead of money.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.andrewmwatson.com/publications" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.andrewmwatson.com/publications" rel="nofollow">http://www.andrewmwatson.com/publications</a></p><p><br /></p><p>The study of medieval money however continued at Toronto, but under a new guy, Munro, who had just got his PhD at Yale, under Lopez and Miskimin.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now the real kicker – you can read the evidence for yourself here (Read page 6 ff and footnote 6)</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-01.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-01.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-01.pdf</a></p><p><br /></p><p>What I conclude is that Munro already figured out that his PhD supervisor Miskimin was operating in a fantasy land, and Lopez was going along with it. But to keep his own career on track he had to keep stum. In fact, Munro waited until they were both dead, and his own career as a front rank scholar was established, before dropping this bombshell.</p><p><br /></p><p>I never met Munro, but we corresponded some, he struck me as an excellent guy all round. The last time I heard from him, he was retired, Toronto had taken back his office and he had been forced to store his archives at home, under his floorboards. He died a little after.</p><p><br /></p><p>I judge Canada has had its academic heroes, as indeed has Australia. Maybe more than back here in the UK these days</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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