Professor Jim Bolton
Professorial Research Fellow
email: j.l.bolton@qmul.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7882 3068
Office: Physics 606
Professor Jim Bolton is Professorial Research Fellow, The Borromei Bank Research Project.
Jim Bolton was born and brought up in east London and is one of seven members of his family who have either attended or worked at Queen Mary. He has a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Letters degree from the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. After graduating in 1961, he worked for four years, first for The Victoria County History of Oxfordshire and then as an archivist at the Oxfordshire County Record Office. He came to Queen Mary in 1965, initially to teach medieval economic history, but soon found himself teaching all aspects of medieval history both British and European, from about 400 AD to 1500 AD. His only triumphs were avoiding the teaching of both political ideas and the history of Tudor England. He eventually took early retirement, as a Senior Lecturer, in 1994. Since then he has been enjoying himself by engaging in uninterrupted research and writing, something he found difficult whilst teaching such a wide range of topics. His principal publications have been on the medieval English economy, and particularly lately on the coinage, the money supply and inflation and deflation, and on migration to England from north-western Europe and Ireland in the fifteenth century.
Jim is currently directing a Research Project on the Milanese bank of Filippo Borromei, computerising the bank's ledgers for London, 1436-39 and Bruges, 1438, originally funded for three years by the Economic and Social Research Council Award R000239125, 1 July 2001 to 31 December 2004. Or at least he thinks he is directing it. His colleague, Dr Francesco Guidi Bruscoli, now of the University of Florence, has most of the best ideas. When not grappling with the complexities of fifteenth-century double entry bookkeeping, he can usually be found sleeping in front of the TV. He also swims, slowly and upsets his eldest son and daughter-in-law by over-exciting his three grandsons. Best of all, being over 65, he has free travel on the tubes and buses. What more could one ask from life?
Publications:
Sole author: J.L.Bolton
‘The World Upside Down: Plague as an Agent of Economic and Social Change’ in M.Ormrod and P.Lindley (eds.), The Black Death in England (Stamford, 1996, reprinted 2003)
The Alien Communities of London in the Fifteenth Century. The Subsidy Rolls of 1440 and 1483-4 (Stamford, 1998)
‘The English Economy in the early Thirteenth Century’ in S.Church (ed.), King John. New Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999, reprinted 2003)
‘La répartition spatiale de la population étrangère à Londres au vxe siècle’ in J.Bottin and D.Calabi (eds.), Les étrangers dans la ville (Paris, 1999)
‘The Irish in Medieval England: the evidence of 1398 and 1440’, Irish Historical Studies, May 2000
‘What is money? What is a money economy? When did a money economy emerge in medieval England?’ in Medieval Money Matters, ed. D.Wood (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004).
‘How Sir Thomas Rempston paid his ransom: or, The mistakes of an Italian bank’, in The Fifteenth Century VII, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2007).
Jointly authored with Dr Francesco Guidi Bruscoli
‘Following a Medieval Money Trail’, BBC History, April 2003.
‘Computerizing Medieval Ledgers: The Borromei Bank Research Project’ in Bulletin of the European Association for Banking History, 1, 2006
‘The Borromei Bank Research Project’ in Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe. Essays in Honour of John H.A.Munro ed. L.Armstrong, I.Elbl and M.M.Elbl (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
‘When did Antwerp replace Bruges as the commercial and financial centre of north-western Europe? The evidence of the Borromei ledger for 1438.’ The Economic History Review, May, 2008.