economic and social history of medieval europe

Towns shrank, and came to serve a more local area than in Roman times. The great Roman roads deteriorated over time, making overland transport difficult and expensive.

In the centuries after the fall of the Roman empire in the west, long-distance trade routes shrank to a shadow of what they had been. TradeĪs in so much else, so for trade: the early medieval period on Europe was a shadow of what had come before under the Roman Empire. At Venice, the Arsenal was a huge complex of shipbuilding and armaments manufacture, employing thousands of workers. Some of this work required skilled specialists, but even these had their own field strips which they worked for much of their time.Įxamples of large-scale industrial units were the salt-mines of central Europe, stone quarries in various places, and shipbuilding, especially in the larger ports. Brewing, milling, baking bread, cheese-making, spinning, weaving, making clothes, tanning leather and making shoes, belts, woodworking, smithing and building and maintaining cottages, barns and other buildings, all were done by the villagers themselves within their own households. Much of this was carried out within rural villages rather than in towns. Most industry in medieval Europe was carried out on a very small scale and was closely related to farming, either processing its produce or servicing its needs. Here craftsmen and shopkeepers such as cobblers, tailors, costermongers, tinkers, smiths and others plied their trades. Surplus produce was sold at the nearest market town, where equipment which could not be made or maintained in the manor workshops, or luxuries unavailable locally, could be purchased. This was, in the early Middle Ages especially, a largely self-sufficient farming estate, with its peasant inhabitants growing their own crops, keeping their own cattle, making their own bread, cheese, beer or wine, and as far as possible making and repairing their own equipment, clothes, cottages, furniture and all the necessities of life. The basic economic unit was the manor, managed by its lord and his officials.

Like all pre-industrial societies, medieval Europe had a predominantly agricultural economy.

Economic and social history of medieval europe