Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600In Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300 1600, Martha C. Howell challenges dominant interpretations of the relationship between the so called commercial revolution of late medieval Europe and the capitalist age that followed. Howell argues that the merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and consumers in cities and courts throughout Western Europe, even in the densely urbanized Low Countries that are the main focus of this study, were by no means proto