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New Configurations (1050-1150) - Economic Networks in Europe and Beyond

6 important questions on New Configurations (1050-1150) - Economic Networks in Europe and Beyond

How did economic expansion occur in the countryside?

Draining marshes, felling trees, building dikes was the backbreaking work that brought new land into cultivation.
Peasants using heavy moldboard plows, now often more efficiently drawn by horses, reaped better harvests.
Profiting from the three-field system, they raised a greater variety of crops.

What did the aristocratic landowners do to become savvy entrepreneurs?

They set up mills to grind grain, forced their tenants to use them, and then charged a fee for the service.

What did the demographic growth fuel?

Demographic growth fueled the development of real villages throughout Europe - communities with their own sense of identity, their own representatives, their own "common" structures centered on churches, cemeteries, squares, fields, woods, wasteland, and the blacksmith's shop where their tools were forged.

How did villages connect with one another?

Taking advantage of their surpluses, villages connected with one another through trade. Better roads allowed wagons laden with goods to pass to and fro, while settlements near rivers were served by flat-bottomed barges.
At weekly markets villagers bought and sold eggs, poultry, blankets, bales of wool, and animal hides.

What did the use of money offer villages?

The use of money offered villages access to wider commercial networks as well - those of towns and cities.

In what did urban centers play a part in?

Urban centers were intensely conscious of their interests and goals, elaborating new instruments of commerce, self-regulating organization, and forms of self-government.
Despite this intense focus on their internal concerns, some of their more enterprising denizens played a part in connecting Europe's economy more and more fully with markets in North Africa and the Middle East, both of which were fed by even more distant trading networks.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

A Short History of the Middle Ages, Sixth Edition | 9781487541019 | Barbara H Rosenwein

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