Towns in the Feudal Period
Please address and answer each question sufficiently. Be concise but also make sure to cover all the bases. If a lengthy response is necessary then please include all pertinent info.
I’ve attached a pdf of the chapter relating to these questions. Use it for some info but feel free to do additional research for additional info that may be necessary.
1. Venice became a highly prosperous city by the late feudal period. What similarities or differences exist between Venice and other cities of this period?
At the beginning of feudalism’s widespread implementation, the centers of economic life was shifted away from towns. European countries had turned toward the self-sufficient agricultural lifestyle that afforded them the security needed to survive their contemporary circumstances.
2. What preconditions are necessary for the establishment of towns?
3. In what ways would craft guild production be considered “precapitalist”?
4. Why were most merchants in the late feudal period considered to be free?
Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD – the analysis of urban life in the feudal period is crucial to understand the long period of transition from feudalism to capitalism
TOWNS IN THE EARLY PERIOD (8th – 11th centuries)
PRECONDITIONS FOR THE REVIVAL OF TOWN LIFE
DEVELOPMENT OF MARITIME AND INLAND CITIES (12th – 13th centuries)
CITY REGULATION
THE URBAN ECONOMY
FOOD AND FOOD SALES
URBAN INDUSTRY
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
TOWNS IN THE EARLY PERIOD (8th – 11th centuries) – the urban centers of the Roma Empire were practically empty during these period due to a large extent to the Moslem invasions during the 7th and 8th centuries. At the beginning of feudalism, towns became less important as centers of economic life, and their populations fell as European countries turned increasingly to an inward looking, self-sufficient agricultural life style.
Functions of towns during this period
Towns as ecclesiastical centers
Towns as military centers.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
Towns as Ecclesiastical Centers
As the Roma Empire disappeared, the Christian Church survived in the old Roman cities. The fact that feudal princess moved back to their country estates meant that the Church’s authority and power in cities increased without any physical presence to provide a counter-influence. Cities were populated by clerics, monks, teachers and students of the Church-run schools, household servants and artisans. Market activity in these towns was limited to the local markets where peasants from the surrounding areas sold agricultural produce to the town dwellers.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
Towns as Military Centers
Roman cities were always fortified against invaders and during the insecurities of the feudal period they served as secure refuges of the neighborhood population. In addition, as feudal nobles were now in charge of defending and protecting their land and population, a new military element to the old town was now added.
Burgs – were strategically located fortresses built with the purpose of serving as military bases.
Over time burgs became administrative centers as the nobles’ agents acquired more authority over the area.
Military and ecclesiastical cities became the locations were the expansion of trade and commerce, and thus the expansion of towns, was located.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
PRECONDITIONS FOR THE REVIVAL OF TOWN LIFE – two conditions are crucial for towns to become permanent establishments:
There must be a need for a town
There must be a surplus food supply in the countryside
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
PRECONDITIONS FOR THE REVIVAL OF TOWN LIFE – two conditions are crucial for towns to become permanent establishments:
There must be a need for a town – there must be some economic function or functions requiring the cooperation of many individuals and the ability to tap support services: activities that can be accomplished only when there is a large enough pool of population in a concentrated area.
There must be a surplus food supply in the countryside
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
PRECONDITIONS FOR THE REVIVAL OF TOWN LIFE – two conditions are crucial for towns to become permanent establishments:
There must be a need for a town – there must be some economic function or functions requiring the cooperation of many individuals and the ability to tap support services: activities that can be accomplished only when there is a large enough pool of population in a concentrated area.
There must be a surplus food supply in the countryside – there must be a way to support an urban population. Townspeople typically do not provide all their food needs themselves, there must be a permanent surplus of food and other agricultural necessities of life. The division of town and country, each with its won specific functions, is one of the earliest and most general examples of a division of labor.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
PRECONDITIONS FOR THE REVIVAL OF TOWN LIFE – in the 11th century the two conditions were met.
A NEED FOR A TOWN: Improving environment for trade and exchange activities created an economic incentive for people to move to cities and towns. The prospect of a new life in the city was helped a general restoration of peace and an increased feeling of security, as well as by improvements in transportation.
SURPLUS FOOD SUPPLY IN THE COUNTRY SIDE: Expansion of agricultural output driven by the extension of usable agricultural land and some improvements in agricultural technology. The production of an agricultural surplus became a permanent possibility.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
The existence of these preconditions (A NEED FOR A TOWN & SURPLUS
FOOD SUPPLY IN THE COUNTRY SIDE) gave rise to the revival of two
types of commercially-oriented cities:
Maritime cities
Inland cities
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
MARITIME CITIES
DEVELOPMENT OF MARITIME CITIES (12th and 13th centuries)
During the 11th century, the Western Church began to face up to the Islamic challenge and for the following two centuries supported the Crusades, periodic military expeditions sent from Europe to recapture the Holy Land from the Moslems. The Crusades aided the revival of those Italian port cities that were the departure points of the crusading armies through their needs for provisioning and transportation.
During this period there was a rise in population, which not only helps explain the extension of land under cultivation but also helps explain some of the population shifts that occurred.
This was a period of internal colonization of Europe, which in later centuries would be transformed into external colonization of previously unknown lands.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
MARITIME CITIES
MAIN MARITIME CITIES
Venice – regarded as the great commercial city of the late feudal period.
Venice was never invaded by barbarians, hence was never a feudal city, and still maintain trading links with the East. A characteristic unique to Venice was the lack of any feudal ethic that held back commercial activity. Gain was important and Venetians didn’t care where it came from: during the Crusades they supply both Christian and Moslem armies.
Exports: wheat, wine and salt.
Imports: luxury fabrics, muslin, gauze, and spices.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
MARITIME CITIES: VENICE
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
MARITIME CITIES
Flanders – Historically, Flanders was a region overlapping parts of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Today, Flanders often designates the merged Flemish Region and Flemish Community, with a parliament and government for the inhabitants of the northern half of Belgium. Flanders may also refer to the Flemish Region, which does not include Brussels-Capital.
Regarded as another important commercial city of the late feudal period.
Competed with Venice and had the advantage of an indigenous cloth industry that could supply cargoes for the return journey.
Exports: cloth.
Imports: raw wool (from England).
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
MAIN MARITIME CITIES : Map of Flanders
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
MARITIME CITIES
MAIN EFFECTS OF THE REVIVAL OF TRADE UNDERLYING THE REVIVAL OF MARITIME CITIES
Enormous profits available for risk-taker merchants – Goods for trade multiplied and increasingly more manufactured European goods exported to the East . Most goods traded were luxuries – spices – with a low weight and a high unit value. This implied huge profits for those merchants willing to take the risks and hazards of the journeys.
Signs of a new capitalist mentality began to shows in this new merchant class . The use of the enormous profits to make still more profits indicated the existence of the idea of capital accumulation. At first, the capitalist spirit dominated only exchange activities. Not until the 18th century did the influence on the production of goods along capitalist lines become widespread.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
INLAND CITIES
DEVELOPMENT OF INLAND CITIES – also developed as a result of the emergence of the merchant class, in this case, the emergence of inland trade. Inland cities were focal points for merchants and were located on trade routes.
Free status of merchants – inland trading was long distance trade and involved the movement of traders in large groups for safety. These merchant-adventurers were always regarded as foreigners and therefore free because they were not tied to any land or any master. Previously only nobles were free. This characteristic of freedom was an important element in the development of new towns because the merchants’ “freedom” also applied to the institutions they created.
Merchants settle in pre-existing towns and burgs and these towns eventually developed into late feudal commercial towns. The people living inside these new burgs were called burghers or burgesses. This term was never applied to the inhabitants of the military burgs, but, in its modern form of bourgeois, is used to describe those involved in urban, capitalist-oriented activities.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
CITY REGULATION – towns were the creation of a new group and its members built up town institutions and organized its function to meet its needs. Each town developed its own rules, and the growing strength of towns implied rivalry between them. This can be seen as a preview of future mercantilist policies that adopted extreme protectionism in order to further the national interest.
Regulation was needed in order to fulfill the town requirements. On top of the list of requirements was the need to guaranteed a sufficient food supply. Food supplies and food sales were regulated down to the minutest detail.
Urban industry was regulated through the development of craft guilds. A guild is an association of producers or sellers in the same trade or activity.
Regulation guaranteed a low cost of living at the expense of the country-side; guaranteed the quality of products by preventing fraud, abuse, adulteration, and shoddy workmanship; and protected the inhabitants of towns as much as possible from competition from outside.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
REGULATION OF FOOD AND FOOD SALES – the most important task of regulation was to guarantee an adequate food supply.
Key targets and effects of regulation of food and food sales:
Control of monopoly elements and price rises
Making all food sales public and eliminating the role of the middleman
Protection of the town’s own merchants
Standardization – during this time we see the beginnings of systems of standardized weights and measures, as well as quality. The standardization of measures was important not only for establishing prices, but also for fixing duties on imports, as import duties were one of the major sources of revenues for monarchs. The quality of goods, including prohibitions on adulteration and unsanitary conditions, was also firmly controlled.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
ENFORCEMENT OF REGULATION OF FOOD AND FOOD SALES – enforcement of regulation was conducted by relying primarily on public punishment.
A baker found guilty of selling an underweight loaf of bread would be carried on a horse-drawn sled through the streets with the offending item strapped around his neck
A fishmonger found guilty of selling rotten fish would be pilloried, while the rotten fish was burnt at the base of the pillory
Repeat offenders were denied sales space in that town, effectively eliminating their livelihood.
Urban craftsmen’s production was required to be performed in public view.
The rules and regulations were based on achieving a civic ideal, the end result limited competition and individual initiative.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
ENFORCEMENT OF REGULATION OF FOOD AND FOOD SALES
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
URBAN INDUSTRY – two types of industrial activity: local craft guilds and export production.
Local craft guilds – produced strictly for the local market and were combinations of urban artisans who formed associations on the basis of their particular line of activity. Members shared resources, travelled together (for security) and shared profits. The main purpose of guilds was to protect both producer and consumer.
Hierarchy of guilds:
Apprentice – person learning the skills of a craft or trade.
Journeyman – guild member who has completed an apprenticeship but is not yet a guild master.
Master – journeyman who successfully completed a “master piece”. This position is an example of the non-capitalist nature of the guild; masters were proprietors of their own small workshops and owned the materials, tools, and output produced.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
Functions of the guild – the guild was much more than just an institution for organizing production. The regulated both economic (wages, conditions of work, and specifications of output) and non-economic matters (the charitable contributions expected from each member, their civic role, their appropriate dress, and even their daily behavior).
Differences between the medieval guild and modern business
The purpose of the guild was not first and foremost to make money
The main purpose of the guild was to preserve a certain orderly way of life
No free play of price, no free competition, no restless probing for advantage
The guilds sought to take the risk out of enterprises
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 3 – Feudalism
TOWNS IN THE FEUDAL PERIOD
URBAN INDUSTRY – two types of industrial activity: local craft guilds and export production.
Export production – workers in these industries were the first example of capitalist production. They received raw materials from merchants and earned wages for producing the finished output.
Contrast to local guilds:
Workers were at the mercy of crises such as war that often affected their economic situation. A loss of markets affected an increasingly large number of people.
Exploitation and worker protests: export workers gave rise to the first recorded strike in the French city of Douai in 1245. This type of social unrest was rarely found in early local guilds, because the journeymen knew their position as wage-workers was only temporary.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM – in this chapter we will review the beginnings of the process of creating a wage labor force and the refocusing of economic activity away from maintenance of the status quo and towards profit-making for the purpose of capital accumulation. The chapter identifies the century from 1350 – 1450 (14TH and 15th century) as the period when Feudalism ended due to a combination of:
Famines
Wars
Plagues
social uprisings
political struggle between the old feudal nobility and the new monarchs.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
List of topics to be discussed:
NECESSARY CHANGES
THE GROWTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY
ECONOMIC RECESSION
THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR (1337-1453)
PLAGUES
COMMUTATION AND ALIENATION OF THE DEMESNE
SOCIAL UNREST AND UPRISINGS & RELIGIOUS UPHEAVALS
EMERGENCE OF NATION STATES
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
NECESSARY CHANGES – three necessary changes had to take place for feudalism to end and a new transition period to begin.
Changes in the productive methods
Changes in social relationships
Changes in the value system
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
NECESSARY CHANGES
Changes in the productive methods – the need to generate agricultural and industrial surpluses.
An agricultural surplus was needed to concentrate people in town and thus increase industrial production.
An industrial surplus allows continued reinvestment in industry and thus capital accumulation in the modern sense of the word.
Implications: new productive methods and purposes (profit motive and deliberate production for a market) were antithetical to those of feudalism. The spread of monetary exchange relationships (revival of trade and commerce in towns) was the most important cause of the decline of feudalism.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
NECESSARY CHANGES
Changes in social relationships – the need to create a wage-based labor force out of independent producers in order to have available labor in agriculture and industry. Social production had to change so that serfs became free of their links to the land and had no other alternative but to become wage laborers. This process took approximately 2 centuries (14th & 15th).
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
NECESSARY CHANGES
Changes in the value system – the need to change the value system from one that encouraged tradition and stability toward one that accepted change. Feudalist value system that justify its rigid two class system gradually gave way to the capitalist ethic.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
THE GROWTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY – how the growth and expansion of a market economy undermined the institution of feudalism and altered the way of life of the rural population.
Local grain markets
Medieval Fairs
Mercantile Laws
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
THE GROWTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY
Local grain markets: The importance of local grain markets was increasing to the point that the first “public” building to be erected after the church was the corn exchange. Local grain markets were still only a very small part of total economic activity but their development had major effects on serfs. Two effects on serfs:
They introduced serfs to a market economy, although the old feudal rights and obligations continue to dominate behavior.
Serfs became familiar with a money economy and thus, local markets were a pre-condition of commutation. Commutation was the substitution of money payments for a serf’s personal services which could only happen if serfs had money.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
THE GROWTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY
Medieval Fairs – infrequent medieval markets for professional merchants engaged in long distance trade. Medieval fairs affected serfs less directly, but it shows the growing weakness of the Feudal structure to prevent change. Medieval Fairs date back to the 11th century, reaching a peak in the 12th century, and declining at the end of the 13th century. In these fairs commercial and exchange activities occupied a privileged position undermining the social ethic of the time in two key aspects:
All attendees were under the protection of the territorial prince, therefore, not subject to the prevailing laws of the time, which were not supportive of new commercial developments.
The prohibition of usury was lifted for the duration of the fair.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
THE DISSOLUTION OF FEUDALISM
THE GROWTH OF THE MARKET ECONOMY
Mercantile Laws: body of law designed by merchants to regulate trading and exchange. The new market-oriented economic relationships were different:
they were based on contract, not status;
based on money, not tradition
these new laws could not be absorbed into the old relationships between lord and serf.
Characteristics of new merchant law:
Contracts binding all parties – in contrast to canon law which frequently absolved a debtor from repayment.
Institution of credit became more sophisticated and acceptable to all parties. This gave rise to the bill of exchange, which is simply a promise to pay a sum of money in a place other than the one where the debt was originally contracted.
The formation of “Pie-powder court”, medieval law courts enforcing mercantile law.
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Eco 223 Economic History of the Western Community: Chapter 4 – End of Feudalism
Questions for Group Brainstorm and discussion:
Venice became a highly prosperous city by the late feudal period. What similarities or differences exist between Venice and other cities of this period?
What preconditions are necessary for the establishment of towns?
Why were most merchants in the late feudal period considered to be free?
Discuss the role played by the new towns of the late medieval period in the dissolution of feudalism.
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