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Trade in the High Middle Ages
FROM THE LECTURE SERIES: THE FOUNDATIONS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
December 15, 2016
By Thomas F. X. Noble, PhD, University of Notre Dame
A medieval fair.
Improved roads and vehicles of transportation provide for increasingly far-flung urban markets. Cities are, in some ways, parasitical on the land around them. They don’t grow their own food, and as cities get larger and larger, they require more resources. That food is going to have to come from farther and farther away, so a great deal of this agricultural productivity out in the countryside also permits the growth of cities and urbanization.
We notice also that both the Church and secular governments worked to protect trade and traders. Agricultural specialization was one important impetus to trade, but there were others like growing prosperity, more money at people’s disposal, and a desire to have more products. Increasingly through movements like the crusades, people were becoming familiar with exotic products from other parts of the world that they wished to have, either because they brought pleasure or because they brought a certain kind of prestige; a certain cachet was attached to having spices on one’s table, for example.
Trade was facilitated by several things, in particular fairs, the fairs in the Champagne region of France being perhaps the most famous. These fairs were held over many months of the year, except the dead of winter, and they moved around from town to town in the Champagne region. Merchants from the south of Europe came north; merchants from the north of Europe came south.
These great fairs were important centers for the growth and promotion of trade, until gradually, by the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century, trade began to move from the Mediterranean world to northern Europe and in the opposite direction by ship.
11-12th century Trade Routes.
Earlier trade tended to move over land or by preference, when possible, on rivers. It was always much easier to float your stuff down a river than to drag it down a road. There were also places, in the south of England or the Baltic Sea basin, for example—where various cities leagued together to protect their commercial interests and to avoid unwanted and unwarranted competition.
The increasing growth of trade began to lead to more sophisticated commercial contracts. This lead to partnerships and then eventually, to corporations. Quite simply, the idea was a large number of people could get together, pool their wealth, and be vastly stronger than any one of them by himself.
Moreover, it was also a way to distribute risk. If I buy a share in a ship and that ship sinks, I’ve lost something. If I own the ship and the ship sinks, I may have lost everything. Because there can be mishaps, insurance began to be sold. A whole series of subsidiary industries, businesses, and economic practices that were based on commerce began to grow, spread, and develop in High Medieval Europe.
Several vast, large-scale commercial networks emerged. For example, there was one that connected the North and the Baltic Seas, which linked together the British Isles, the Low Countries, as well as northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. There were important commercial networks that went up and down the Rhine, back and forth on the Danube, and up and down the Rhone, the great river of southeastern France. The great river networks were always significant.
Medieval Venice was the center of a vast trading network.
Italian cities such as Venice, Bari, and Genoa had important commercial networks in the Mediterranean. Venice, in particular, had a far-flung and sophisticated commercial network in the eastern Mediterranean.
Outside of Europe, the eastern Mediterranean world was linked by land routes that went right through Central Asia to China—the Silk Road, for example—but it was also linked to a vast set of seaborne trade routes in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Goods came by caravan or by ship from the Persian Gulf region and the Indian Ocean region, eventually linking together South Asia and the eastern coast of Africa with the eastern Mediterranean. Then through Italian merchants, the products of those parts of the world were brought back to Western Europe, via river or overland trade routes, to places like France and England.
Link to Technology Post:
https://www.theapricity.com/forum/sh...=1#post6902018
Link to Population Growth Post:
https://www.theapricity.com/forum/sh...=1#post6951746
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