Western Civilization Notes – David Underhill

Mar 03 (308-312) – The Revival of Commerce, Law, and Order

The Growth of Towns and Commerce (308)

• Agricultural revolution was the foundation of the commercial revolution
• Silver fueled exchange between England, Flanders, and Rhineland cities by 1000
• England traded goods as far away as Constantinople and Spain
• Scandinavia traded goods as far away as Ireland, Southern Italy, and the Caspian Sea

Commerce (308)

• Nobles and churchmen began to be able to afford luxuries which increased the market size
• Europe is becoming a unified economy
• Italians build ships which buy wool directly from England, taking out the Flemish middle-men
• Italy created its own cloth from this wool and as a result Flemish wool declined
• Long-distance trade was risky – fortunes could be made or lost
• Aristocrats generally disliked merchants because their fortunes did not come from lineage usually
• Investments arose to fund long-distance ventures … led to
• New forms of commercial contracts
• New methods of accounting (inc. double-entry bookkeeping)
• New credit mechanisms
• Christianity forbade money lending but eventually condoned making profits on commercial risks (essentially the same thing)
• St. Bonaventura – argued for merchants as God’s favored
• Long-distance trade brought great wealth, but was not the primary factor of commercial revolution
• High population cities depended primarily on wealth of nearby lands from which they got food, materials, and people

Towns (311)

• Symbiotic relationship with rural towns – provided manufactured goods in exchange for surplus food
• Flourishing towns took specialties (universities, long-distance trade, manufactures)
• Cloth the most important industry
• Most manufacturing done by artisans though a few large industrial enterprises existed
• Artisans regulated by “guilds” of professionals in the same craft
• Only master artisans voted in guilds
• Promoted interests of the richest members – monopoly preservation, competition limited
• Limited employment terms
• Forbid journeyman (in b/w masters & apprentices) to marry or setup shop sometimes
• Set prices, wages, no after-hours work, and required certain production methods and qualities
• A “masterpiece” had to be made and their had to be a spot for another master in town to become a master
• Guilds were exclusionary and had much power
• Membership often a prerequisite for office
• Citizenship often controlled by guilds
• Explicitly Christian
• Restricted wages; women allowed to work but could not control anything in a guild
• Still somewhat rural in towns: streets usually unpaved, houses often had gardens, animals wandered about
• Fires common, disease rampant, waste often badly handled and the town reeked of it