The second volume of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, first published in 1952, was a survey by an international group of specialist scholars covering trade and industry in pre-Roman, Roman and Byzantine Europe, the medieval trade of northern and southern Europe, and the histories of medieval woollen manufacture, mining and metallurgy, and building in stone. This second edition, in addition to revising most chapters and the bibliographies appended to them, also fills gaps which arose from the wartime and post-war circumstances in which the first edition was written. New chapters provide accounts of the trade and industry of eastern Europe, of medieval Europe's trade with Asia and Africa, and of medieval coinage and currency. Taken with volumes I and III of the series, this volume is designed to complete a comprehensive review of the economic history of medieval Europe as a whole. It was planned by the late Sir Michael Postan, and was largely completed under his editorship.

Of all the activities of the most neglected century in English History, England's trade has received the least attention in proportion to its importance. It was obviously in the course of the later Middle Ages, and more particularly in the fifteenth century, that there took place the great transformation from medieval England, isolated and intensely local, to the England of the Tudor and Stuart age, with its world-wide connections and imperial designs. It was during the same period that most of the forms of international trade characteristic of the Middle Ages were replaced by new methods of commercial organization and regulation, national in scope and at times definitely nationalistic in object, and that a marked movement towards capitalist methods and principles took place in the sphere of domestic trade. Yet little has been written concerning English trade in this period. First published in 1933, this classic volume goes a long way to fills this gap superbly. There is an abundance of material, and the writers have compiled a statistical analysis of the Enrolled Customs Account from 1377-1482, which provides an essential measure of the nature, volume, and movement of English foreign commerce during the period.