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172 Reviews created opportunities for Antwerp; limitation or embargoes on trade in one state saw shippers moving en masse to another. In some places the English could trade cloth, in others only wool. For the merchants of England and the Hanse, keeping abreast of the current state of politics as it affected their trading goods was a critical element of commercial success. Even in years when warfare did not cut off all the legal trading routes, a minor shift in political agreement could be disastrous. The confiscation of ship and contents in such circumstances was to be expected and the process of recovery—if recovery was possible—was slow and uncertain. Given the turbulence of the period, which moved between open fighting and acrimonious trade wars, it is remarkable that the trade routes and trade goods continued to flow with as little disruption as they did. Dr Fudge painstakingly documents from such records as survive the passage of products and ships and for thefirsttime shows how the transition from the medieval Hanseatic period to the Early M o d e m period of open seas in the Baltic and North Sea came about. H e shows the already specialised role fulfilled by some of the English east coast ports and the very different mercantile structures which had evolved to meet these needs. This helps explain the otherwise mysterious differences in their fortunes during the period. This is a very readable book which, while making no concessions to popularising, gives a lucid picture of mercantile experience in the North Sea in the period. The changing relationship between merchants and shippers is teased out of the partial evidence available. Fudge's account of the embassies which passed between the states, their composition, powers and diplomatic effectiveness, casts new light on international relations at the time. Structured chronologically, the book makes the sequence of events, which would otherwise be confusing, intelligible. I look forward to reading further work on this subject from Dr Fudge. Sybil M Jack History Department University of Sydney Furton, Edward James, A Medieval Semiotic: Reference and Representation in John of St. Thomas' Theory of Signs (History and Language, 4), N e w York, Peter Lang, 1995; board; pp. x, 201; R.R.P. $US58.00. This book is an admirable commentary on and interpretation of a classic Reviews 173 work, or, rather, parts thereof—the theory of signs developed by the Dominican, John of St. Thomas, in his Cursus Philosophicus, a commentary on the Aristotelian corpus and a text which saw publication sixteen times between the years 1631 and 1930. The theory of signs expounded by the Renaissance scholar expresses the abiding confidence in the capacity of language and (Christian) thought to reflect the real, a view which was the conviction and spiritual certitude of the vast majority in the Europe of his days (1589-1644). The m o d e m work is described by its o w n theologian author as 'a partial antidote to the current spate of exceptionally abstruse and pessimistic estimates of what can be hoped for concerning the accuracy and truth of human discourse' (p. 3). John of St. Thomas had two principal recommendations to combat the then contemporary spiritual malaise: firstly the demonstration that language can accurately represent the real; and, secondly, that this occurs because of the objectivity of human thought. If language is but some form of convention, then w e live in a shadow world, a partial reality against which Plato had warned us in The Republic. Thus he, John of St. Thomas, was concerned ultimately to show language to be a natural phenomenon and a force (neutral and spiritual) which presupposes the higher abstractive power of the human intellect and the general faithfulness of thinking. In thefirstof the four major sections Furton treats of the notions of the nature of the linguistic sign held by John of St. Thomas and Ferdinand de Saussure. The latter's views are shown to be similar to those of various opponents of John who held the sign to be rational rather than real and wished to prove that concepts themselves are purely rational. These notions were rebutted by John who had written...

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