Professor John Munro passed away on December 23, 2013. This site is maintained and kept online as an archive. For more infomation please visit the Centre for Medieval Studies
Professor John H. Munro (Professor Emeritus of Economics)
Department of Economics
University of Toronto
150 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G7
CANADA
416-978-6713 (fax)
LECTURES FOR MY COURSES IN
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC HISTORY COURSES, 2010 - 2011
Revised: 5 September 2011
Since and from the academic year 2008 - 2009, I have been offering only one full-year course, in European Economic History. each year, alternating
my two courses listed below
- ECO 301Y: The Economic History of Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 1250 - 1750
- ECO 303Y: The Economic History of Modern Europe, to 1914 (World War I)
This current year (2010-2011), I am offering only ECO 301Y: the Economic History of Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 1250 - 1750. Last year, I offered my other course, ECO 303Y: The
Economic History of Modern Europe to 1914; but I am not offering it again this year -- though I may do so in the following academic year (2012-2013). Note that European -- and World -- Economic History from 1914
to the Present Day is offered in ECO 342Y, to complete our sequence.
The Lecture Notes for my ECO 301Y: the Economic History of Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 1250 - 1750: for 2011 - 2012.
- Schedule of Postings for 2011 - 2012 : in html format. In this document, you will find URL links (in the lef-hand column), under the indicated date and topic number,
to the published lectures in both PDF format (preferable) and in
MS-Word (converted, often imperfectly, from Word Perfect), which can be edited. These lectures will be posted online, in both formats, only after they have been given in class (and possibly revised again after class).
- In this lecture schedule, you will also find, in the left-hand column, under the indicated date and topic number, URL links to supplementary aids, in the form of graphs, maps, and drawing, in either MS-Word
or in PDF.
- Also see pdf format: for the schedule (topics and dates) only.
- The lectures themselves can be accessed and downloaded only from the html document .
- Power Point Presentations of the ECO 301Y lectures: these Power Point summaries will again be posted online only after the
lectures have been given in class (see above). They are available in PDF format: as conversions from the Power Point. On some computers, the PDF versions work better often work better,
especially in properly filling the screen. But unlike Power Point files, these PDF files cannot be edited.
The Lecture Notes for Eco 303Y1: for 2010- 2011 (for the previous academic year)
As indicated above, all of my undergraduate lectures, for both courses, have been or will be posted in two formats: PDF and MS-Word.
These postings will also be found in the Lecture Schedules at the end of the following
sections for ECO 301Y1 and 303Y1, respectively.
Of the two formats, the PDF version provides the best and clearest
text, but not one that you can edit; and I have so far not found an effective
means of including graphs in a file small enough in bytes to be downloaded easily. It is much easier for me to publish the graphs, maps, etc.
relevant for each lecture online
as separate documents in MS-Word format.
The MS- Word versions of the lectures are converted from Word Perfect, but such conversions are not indeed always perfect. You are
strongly advised to open the Word file first, and thus not to 'save to disk'. Save it to your hardrive once you have opened and edited the Word document.
My current reflections on On Line University Lectures. This document contains a transcript of an 'op ed' piece written
by a first-year Ontario university student, and published in the Toronto Star, on 19 June 2008. The most interesting
or provocative line is: 'The classes I found most relevant and most enjoyed had little or no reliance on the Internet for class notes.' That raises the
interesting question: 'If what this student states is valid, should we university professors post our lectures online?' I respond to his
points, in offering a justitication for my publishing my lectures online, in my format -- and only after the lectures have been given verbally in class.
I would welcome feedback on this issue, especially from students who have taken my economic history courses (i.e., those who passed!!).
NOTICE: THE ONLINE LECTURE NOTES SHOULD BE USED ONLY AS SUPPLEMENTS TO THE ACTUAL LECTURES: NOT AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR THEM
Please read this notice with care, if you wish to pass this course, or rather at least pass the final examination.
- In my many years of experience, in posting my lectures online -- which certainly involves tradeoffs -- I have found that many students make the grave error of skipping classes, believing that
they can learn the material just as well by reading the lectures on-line. Many and sometime most who do so end up failing the final examination.
- The online lectures, so posted, can be a useful supplement; but they are not a substitute for the actual verbal lectures given in class.
Unless students come to class, to hear the lectures, most fail to understand properly the lecture materials:
this is, unless students come to class (regulararly) in order to hear me speak, to comprehend my emphases (both in words and hand gestures),
to see the overheads, to hear and/or respond to questions, to understand the emphases given to particular topics. We learn both by hearing and reading -- and also by discussing issues in class.
- Furthermore, my verbal lectures in class are different from the printed versions: I certainly never 'read' my lectures, and generally speak to the posted Overhead Transparencies, often
offering totally unscripted and spontaneous comments that never appear in the written and published version of the lecture (unless I deem them important enough to be added in my revisions, after class).
- Most of those students who skip class, for this reason, i.e., believing that reading the online lectures is sufficient, end up waiting too long to read the lectures:
and then they cannot possibly comprehend and put together the vast amount of the lecture materials, covering many hundreds of pages.
- To use the online lectures properly, read them only after the lecture, but within the same week, and focus only on those aspects of the lecture that you did not fully understand in class.
- At the same time, you should also read those portions of the lecture that, for reasons of limited time, I was unable to give (verbally) in class.
- If your native language is not English, you should benefit even more from reading these lectures online, in order to comprehend strange words and unfamiliar concepts.
- Economics and economic history are fundamentally quantitive in nature; and you should never trust my lectures or any of the assigned readings (published materials)
without examining the statistical evidence: provided here in
both tables and in colour graphs, in almost all lectures.
- For many or indeed most students, the major advantage of the online lectures will be in preparing their two (or three) term essays, as well as, of course, in preparing for the voluntary
mid-year test in January, and the obligatory final examination in April or early May.
- Finally, another advantage of having the lectures posted online is that you should not have to take so many notes: it is better to listen carefully, view the overheads, and take only a few notes,
on the most important issues. You can always make more extensive notes in reading the lectures online. But taking at least some notes help you better to comprehend the lecture as it is being given.
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