Alexandra Kaar, . Beihefte zu J.F. Böhmer, Regesta Imperii, 46. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2020, 387 pp.

In this thought-provoking study, Alexandra Kaar assembles an impressive dossier of diplomatic and other archival sources mentioning economic activity between Hussites and non-Hussites (referred to throughout as Catholics) to understand better the political and cultural dynamics of trade restrictions in the later Middle Ages. Not a work of economic history in a traditional sense, her story spans some sixteen years, beginning in 1420 with Pope Martin V’s call to crusade against the Bohemian dissidents and ending around 1436, when the compacts were reached in the Moravian city of Jihlava. Kaar’s main argument is that the embargo practices of the papacy and the empire against the Hussites took many different forms. These corresponded in turn to a vast array of strategic ends, not all of which necessarily had anything to do with moveable goods. To be sure, wares of all types feature heavily in the sources. But those wares, the author argues, are better understood as part of a larger cultural and political discourse that drew on the language of economics and trade. To what degree and in what form could one interact with those identified as Hussites, and who was responsible for articulating and regulating those strictures?