Minoritarian entrepreneurs: pottery, commerce and urbanisation in medieval England (<i>c</i>. AD 1200–1350)

From the perspective of the present, the economic development of preceding periods can seem linear and inevitable, guided into being by those who benefitted most from increasing commercialisation. Yet this majoritarian narrative belies the importance of the individual and the everyday, of adaptation and creativity. Here, the author explores the potential of a minoritarian approach to entrepreneurship, in understanding medieval economic development. In tracing pottery-exchange networks as a representation of commercial development, they argue that the entrepreneurial actions of institutions and potters generate insights into economic development that challenge linear narratives, framing it as a patchwork of sociomaterial relations.