Richard Unger, born in Huntington, West Virginia, USA, in 1942. Ph.D. from Yale University, New Haven. Professor of Medieval History at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Fellow (1 September 2003 – 30 June 2004)
THE DUTCH INFORMAL EMPIRE IN THE BALTIC DURING THE GOLDEN AGE
The book Beer in Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) was completed and published during the year. A database of grain prices from over 100 European cities from the late Middle Ages to 1914 was published on the World Wide Web. Research on economic, political and cultural interaction between the Dutch Republic and the states and people of the Baltic region yielded a framework and methods for studying what was a complex relationship. Work on energy use, especially wind energy, and its environmental impact in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution led to some four seminars and two articles as well as cooperation with a network of scholars in Europe working on similar problems. Programmes for three different future conferences were developed during the year, the conferences to be held in the United States, Poland and Canada in 2004 and 2005.