View Poll Results: Balance of the Middle Ages

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  • Great Historical Period

    9 81.82%
  • A Dark Age for Knowledge

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  • Necessary period for what came next

    2 18.18%
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Thread: Middle Ages Appreciation Thread

  1. #21
    Galantuomo
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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

    Quote Originally Posted by Creoda View Post
    Socks and sandals are respectable though.
    Quote Originally Posted by Richmondbread View Post
    I don't mind being the dumbest, as long as I am the prettiest.
    Quote Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen View Post
    Lo mas interesante e ironico (al menos para un foro como este) es la falta de negros.

  2. #22
    Galantuomo
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    Default WORK IN THE MIDDLE AGES

    Work in the Middle Ages. Shorter workweek than today's?



    The Four Orders of Society During the Middle Ages

    Of course, when you say "Middle Ages" it covers a thousand years and things changed over these centuries but generally there were four different orders during the Middle Ages:

    1. Clergy
    2. Nobles and Kings
    3. Merchant Guildsmen
    4. Craftsmen and Laborers


    This article, for the most part covers the fourth category of Craftsmen and laborers.

    Some of the well known Medieval Jobs:

    • Miller
    • StoneMason
    • BlackSmith
    • Armorer
    • Falconer
    • Tailor
    • Carpenter
    • Plowman
    • Butcher
    • GoldSmith
    • MetalSmith
    • Groom
    • Squire
    • Page
    • SilverSmith
    • Grocer
    • Draper
    • Furrier
    • FishMonger
    • Baker
    • Weaver





    Lesser known but no less interesing Medieval Jobs:

    • Cooper - This is the profession of Barrel Maker
    • Cobbler - repaired shoes
    • Cordwainer - Made new shoes. Cobbler and Cordwainer were very distinct job differences.
    • Cartwright - Cart Maker
    • Chandler - A candlemaker. But often times in castles a chandler was also in charge of all the candles making sure they were lit and put out at appropriate times.
    • Hayward or HedgeWarder - HIs duty was to inspect the fences and hedges around the meadows or gardens. And, A blast from teh Haywards horn signals the beginning of mowing or reaping.
    • Bailiff - Was hired by the lord to be his general overseer
    • Reeve - Was elected by the Peasants to be their representative
    • Brewer - Would make various alcoholic beverages, He would hang a green branch over his door which would signify that the brew was ready. I read an interesting anecdote about a brewer who made a bad batch of brew and was punished for it. They made him drink some of his brew and they poured the rest over his head. This is an official case. I wonder if the bailiff was involved in that.





    Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's

    from The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor
    See also: Productivity and the Workweekand: Eight centuries of annual hours

    The labouring man will take his rest long in the morning; a good piece of the day is spent afore he come at his work; then he must have his breakfast, though he have not earned it at his accustomed hour, or else there is grudging and murmuring; when the clock smiteth, he will cast down his burden in the midway, and whatsoever he is in hand with, he will leave it as it is, though many times it is marred afore he come again; he may not lose his meat, what danger soever the work is in. At noon he must have his sleeping time, then his bever in the afternoon, which spendeth a great part of the day; and when his hour cometh at night, at the first stroke of the clock he casteth down his tools, leaveth his work, in what need or case soever the work standeth.
    -James Pilkington, Bishop of Durham, ca. 1570
    One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.



    These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind.


    Therefore, we must take a longer view and look back not just one hundred years, but three or four, even six or seven hundred. Consider a typical working day in the medieval period. It stretched from dawn to dusk (sixteen hours in summer and eight in winter), but, as the Bishop Pilkington has noted, work was intermittent - called to a halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner. Depending on time and place, there were also midmorning and midafternoon refreshment breaks. These rest periods were the traditional rights of laborers, which they enjoyed even during peak harvest times. During slack periods, which accounted for a large part of the year, adherence to regular working hours was not usual. According to Oxford Professor James E. Thorold Rogers[1], the medieval workday was not more than eight hours. The worker participating in the eight-hour movements of the late nineteenth century was "simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago."

    An important piece of evidence on the working day is that it was very unusual for servile laborers to be required to work a whole day for a lord. One day's work was considered half a day, and if a serf worked an entire day, this was counted as two "days-works."[2] Detailed accounts of artisans' workdays are available. Knoop and jones' figures for the fourteenth century work out to a yearly average of 9 hours (exclusive of meals and breaktimes)[3]. Brown, Colwin and Taylor's figures for masons suggest an average workday of 8.6 hours[4].

    The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official -- that is, church -- holidays included not only long "vacations" at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints' andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. In addition to official celebrations, there were often weeks' worth of ales -- to mark important life events (bride ales or wake ales) as well as less momentous occasions (scot ale, lamb ale, and hock ale). All told, holiday leisure time in medieval England took up probably about one-third of the year. And the English were apparently working harder than their neighbors. The ancien rčgime in France is reported to have guaranteed fifty-two Sundays, ninety rest days, and thirty-eight holidays. In Spain, travelers noted that holidays totaled five months per year.[5]

    The peasant's free time extended beyond officially sanctioned holidays. There is considerable evidence of what economists call the backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise, workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work "by the year or the half year or by any of the usual terms but only by the day." And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year -- 175 days -- for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year.



    Eight centuries of annual hours


    13th century - Adult male peasant, U.K.: 1620 hours
    Calculated from Gregory Clark's estimate of 150 days per family, assumes 12 hours per day, 135 days per year for adult male ("Impatience, Poverty, and Open Field Agriculture", mimeo, 1986)

    14th century - Casual laborer, U.K.: 1440 hours

    Calculated from Nora Ritchie's estimate of 120 days per year. Assumes 12-hour day. ("Labour conditions in Essex in the reign of Richard II", in E.M. Carus-Wilson, ed., Essays in Economic History, vol. II, London: Edward Arnold, 1962).

    Middle ages - English worker: 2309 hours

    Juliet Schor's estime of average medieval laborer working two-thirds of the year at 9.5 hours per day

    1400-1600 - Farmer-miner, adult male, U.K.: 1980 hours

    Calculated from Ian Blanchard's estimate of 180 days per year. Assumes 11-hour day ("Labour productivity and work psychology in the English mining industry, 1400-1600", Economic History Review 31, 23 (1978).

    1840 - Average worker, U.K.: 3105-3588 hours

    Based on 69-hour week; hours from W.S. Woytinsky, "Hours of labor," in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. III (New York: Macmillan, 1935). Low estimate assumes 45 week year, high one assumes 52 week year

    1850 - Average worker, U.S.: 3150-3650 hours

    Based on 70-hour week; hours from Joseph Zeisel, "The workweek in American industry, 1850-1956", Monthly Labor Review 81, 23-29 (1958). Low estimate assumes 45 week year, high one assumes 52 week year

    1987 - Average worker, U.S.: 1949 hours

    From The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor, Table 2.4

    1988 - Manufacturing workers, U.K.: 1856 hours

    Calculated from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, Office of Productivity and Technology

    http://medieval.stormthecastle.com/medieval-jobs.htm
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/user..._workweek.html

    Quote Originally Posted by Creoda View Post
    Socks and sandals are respectable though.
    Quote Originally Posted by Richmondbread View Post
    I don't mind being the dumbest, as long as I am the prettiest.
    Quote Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen View Post
    Lo mas interesante e ironico (al menos para un foro como este) es la falta de negros.

  3. #23
    Galantuomo
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    Quote Originally Posted by Creoda View Post
    Socks and sandals are respectable though.
    Quote Originally Posted by Richmondbread View Post
    I don't mind being the dumbest, as long as I am the prettiest.
    Quote Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen View Post
    Lo mas interesante e ironico (al menos para un foro como este) es la falta de negros.

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