PENGUIN STUDY GUIDE CH. 6

Chapter 6: The Expansion of Europe

Towns and trade had begun to revive, new lands were being brought under cultivation, and the frontiers of Europe were expanding
• Inhabitants increasing
o Between 1000 and 1300 population increased at least two folds
o Population increase maybe due to:
• Improvements in agricultural techniques
• Development of harness for horse plowing
• Adoption of three field rotation of crops (more land more productively)
o Impossible to offer any factual explanation
• The land is having to support more people
o Canals and dykes cut to drained swamps being built, clearing of land and trees began
o Not only more labor induced but the need for more laborers (much work of reclamation was evidently due to the undirected initiative of peasants)
• Lords (William I of England) imposing “forest laws” to prevent agricultural uprising
o Count of Vedosome burned houses of those who participated in agricultural expansion
• Lords created strict rules:
o Cistercian houses were to be built in waste places; monks were to accept no settled land, but to labor for their upkeep with their own hands
• Cistercian lay brothers, sworn to poverty and chastity did not found homesteads or raise families
• France
o Count of Maine gave to Church of St. Vincent of Le Mans
• “Leave to build a Bourg:” to build about the new church a little town and rent the houses to countrymen who would agree to cultivate the land around it
o others imitated the churches
• Lords had land to offer; they learned to encourage colonization because they found it made them richer
• Offered greater freedom
• Was protected and privileged by charter of its founder
• Paid rent of some kind
• Were not bound to soil
• The larger the city the better the defense system
o The manorial system of the previous age began to decay but at the same time the gap between those who owned land and those who tilled it grew wider
• Crusade to the Holy Land
o Spain had fueros-like French bourgs
• Settlers from far afield
o Christian expansion to the South continued steadily
• Germany
o Over lordship and tribute had been the prime German objective, the settlement of conquered land began to take pride of place
o 1147 campaign during second crusade to Palestine:
• “Let the God who is in Heaven be our God and it will suffice”
o German settlement was being pushed further east and south
• Expansion of Normandy
o Not peasants who responded to increased population
o Fortunes were Hautevilles to be won in the service of Greeks and Lombards
• Hautevilles taught the Normans they could win these lands for themselves
o Conquests of the Normans
• Lead by Roger and Roger II, gained land in Italy and Sicily, Roger II became king of Sicily
• Conquest of England in 1066
• Restless aristocracy made their influence not with peasants
• Norman conquests and German colonization reflect at different social levels, responses to identical pressures
o Externally and internally, Christian Europe was expanding

Discovery of Commerce and Revival of City Life
• Cities grew more than countryside
• New influences in the way of life of medieval Christendom
• Merchant’s success was by knowing where to find goods and production
o Associations, native home and travels to where he could buy and sell
o Goods came from outside
• (orient) silks, spices
• Italian merchants carried most of these goods
• Goods produced in Europe were clothes
• Flanders, north Italy and Champagne:
o These were the nodal points of commerce
o Italy excelled all others in wealth and enterprise
o Most goods coming into Europe came through Constantinople; on this trade merchants of Venice were growing rich
o Earliest achievements were due to individual enterprise
• Pisa, Genoa, and Venice built up wide commercial empires
o Merchants raised money on the security of his own land and a partner to load cargo
• They shared risk and profit
• Success increased demands for goods to be exported and stimulated a circulation of means of exchange, currency
• Nobles began to leave their homes to pursue the money in trading, buying and selling
o Men drawn in from the countryside by the lure of opportunity
• Flemish cities never achieved the same independence as the Italians
o In the long run their culture was less rich and individual and depended more on the protection of noble rulers
o Class of citizens in commerce had no place in the social framework
o No understanding of problems for commercial men
• Questions of contract and debt
• Regulation of wages and prices
• Conditions of labor and sale
o Only dealt with by the citizens themselves
o Right to self-government was vital
o Gained right “to chose their own laws”
o Gained independence (new force of the life of Christian society, the bourgeoisie)
• Cities became bastions of liberty
o Buildings, churches, cathedrals and guildhalls testify to public spirit born of pride of achievement
o They did not think of other cities as allies but as rivals
o The natural tendency of city government was towards quarrelsome oligarchy
• Independence had its downfalls
• Effects of civil and commercial revival
o Increased commercial exchange stimulated a great revival in currency circulation
o Long-term – steady depreciation of money
• government became more businesslike as money came to count more than land
• Christendom-internal change brought the spread of new ideas
• Capital cities in certain countries developed
• Christian society
o Promoted a more common level of culture