In the 10th century, European countries were no longer threatened by invasions. The last invaders - Normans and Slavs - had already established themselves respectively in northern France (Normandy) and central-eastern Europe (present-day Hungary). The continent was now experiencing "medieval peace", which brought about changes that provoked transformations in the European panorama.
In the period from the 11th to the 15th century - the so-called Late Middle Ages - there was a decline in feudalism. The population increase caused by this phase of stability led to the need for more land, on which workers developed agricultural techniques that made their work easier. Individuals began to settle around the castles, trading local surplus products and originating from other regions of Europe. Currency was once again needed, and several important cities sprang up along trade and sea and land routes.
At the same time, the Church, strengthened, promoted Christianizing expeditions to the East - the Crusades - trying to recover the city of Jerusalem, then held by the Islamic Empire. For two centuries, the Crusades shook all of Europe, because in addition to the religious aspects, there was a huge commercial impulse.
The Commercial Expansion
The invasions that took place from the 5th to the 8th century and the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire led to the formation of a social, political and economic system adapted to the new conditions - feudalism. In the same way, after the tenth century, new facts and circumstances determined another great transformation in Western Europe.
Although manors continued to produce normally, with serfs working the land and paying their obligations to feudal lords, production was insufficient to feed a constantly growing population.
During this period, several technical achievements were introduced that partially facilitated rural activities, such as the plow and other iron agricultural implements, windmills and new ways of harnessing animals, in order to allow them to be used at full strength. . The replacement of the ox by the horse, as a draft animal, also brought advantages, since the horse is a more agile animal and with the same strength as the ox.
Despite this, the piece of land cultivated was very small, which generated a tendency to expand agricultural space beyond the limits of manors and villages. With the same objective, woods and forests were also occupied.
At the same time, this growing population also required products of a different nature:fabrics, work tools, household items, among others. Some individuals (villains) specialized in the production of handicrafts or in commercial activity, giving rise to artisans and merchants who sold these products and any agricultural surpluses.
Some of them received permission from the feudal lord to concentrate next to castles, monasteries and churches, giving rise to the so-called burgos, the nucleus of future cities. For this reason, its inhabitants came to be known as bourgeois, a new social category dedicated to handicrafts and the commerce of goods.
A fact related to this evolution was the emergence of the Crusades, which took place in the 6th to 13th centuries, which had a great influence on this panorama, increasing the possibilities of trade in Europe and the East.
The Importance of the Crusades
When it was denounced in Europe that Muslims mistreated Christian pilgrims who arrived in the Holy Land, the crusade movement began, which was named after the cross that those who participated in it used on their banners and clothing.
First convened by Pope Urban II in 1095 in France, the Crusades were, then, expeditions by European Christians against Muslims that took place during the 11th to 13th centuries. The mission of the Christian knights was to liberate the region of Palestine, which at the time was part of the Islamic Empire.
In addition to this religious motivation, however, other political and economic interests drove the crusade movement:
The Church sought to unite the Christians of the West and the East, who had separated in 1054, in the so-called Eastern Chrism, from which the Greek Orthodox Church emerged, led by the Patriarch of Constantinople;
There was a layer of the nobility that did not inherit fiefs as the inheritance belonged only to the eldest son. Thus, the landless nobles of Western Europe wanted to seize the lands of the East;
Italian traders, mainly from the cities of Genoa and Venice, wanted to dominate the Mediterranean Sea trade and obtain some luxury goods to trade in Europe;
Other marginalized population groups were interested in gaining wealth in eastern cities.
Eight Crusades were organized between 1095 and 1270, which despite obtaining some victories over the Muslims, failed to reconquer the Holy Land.
These expeditions involved from simple and poor people to the high nobility, kings and emperors, and there was even a Crusade formed only by children. Tens of thousands of people banded together under the command of a nobleman and traveled enormous distances, having to obtain food and shelter along the way. Most before reaching their destination were massacred in combat.
In 1099, Jerusalem was conquered, but a century later it was taken again by the Muslim Turks and was never recovered. However, the Europeans managed to reconquer some points of the Mediterranean Sea coast, reestablishing maritime trade between Europe and the East.
The contact of Europeans with Eastern peoples - Byzantine and Muslim - made them begin to appreciate and consume products such as perfumes, fine fabrics, jewelry, in addition to spices, as the first was called, nutmeg, cloves, ginger and sugar.
In the twelfth century, as an immediate consequence of the Crusades, commercial expansion in Europe began and, with it, the growth of cities and the decline of servile work, typical of feudalism.
Trade Routes and Fairs
Commercial expansion, from the reopening of the Mediterranean Sea, mainly benefited the Italian cities of Genoa and Venice. Merchants from these cities began to monopolize the spice trade, buying them in the eastern ports of Constantinople, Alexandria and Tripoli, and then selling them across the Mediterranean on the European market.
But in northern Europe, along the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, regions of intense trade were also formed, served in part by Italian cities, which reached them both by sea and by land. It was the region of Flanders, producer of fabrics, where the city of Bruges stood out, and the region of the Baltic Sea, whose important centers were Hamburg, Danzig and Lübeck, which offered honey, skins, wood and fish from nearby regions.
To contact these points, different trade routes were established. The sea route connected Italian cities to important commercial centers in northern Europe. The land route also connected Italian cities to the busy region of Fladres, but crossed the whole of France.
At the crossroads of these great trade routes with other smaller ones, which linked all parts of Europe, fairs appeared, large open and periodical markets, where traders from various parts of the continent went. Protected by feudal lords, who charged them with passage and permanence fees, merchants settled for days and weeks in some regions, offering goods such as textiles, wines, spices and oriental luxury items. The most famous fairs were those in the Champagne region of France.
Commercial development in the twelfth century made money necessary again .
However, as coins of different values were minted in each region, money changers appeared, people who knew the values of the coins and were responsible for exchanging them. Later, as the relationships became more complex, the baqueiros appeared, who kept the merchants' money and provided them with loans by charging interest. The systems of checks and bills of exchange, which facilitated commercial transactions carried out at a distance, which are still used today, date back to that time.
The Resurgence of Cities
With the commercial expansion, the villages developed, which had appeared around castles, monasteries and churches, in addition to others, emerged on trade routes, on the coast and on the banks of rivers. Its population, as we have seen, was basically made up of artisans and merchants, who gained more and more importance due to their wealth and number.
The artisans were dedicated to the manufacture of fabrics, iron instruments, leather, and many other materials. His workshops, which operated with open doors, also served to sell goods directly, without intermediaries.
With the rapid growth of trade and crafts in the birgos, competition between merchants and artisans increased greatly. To regulate and protect the various activities, corporations emerged. In the beginning, they were formed only by authorized merchants and carried out their work in each city. Later, with the specialization of the various artisans, craft guilds appeared, which had great importance during the Low Middle Ages:guilds of bakers, weavers, bricklayers, carpenters, etc.
Each of these corporations brought together the members of an activity, regulating the quantity and quality of the products, the work regime and the final price. They thus sought to eliminate unfair competition, ensure work for all the workshops in the same city and prevent similar products from other regions from entering local markets.
In this way, craft corporations also determined labor relations. In each workshop there were only three categories of artisans.
Masters, who commanded the production, being owners of the workshop, of the work instruments and of the raw material;
Officers or companions, who were specialized workers in the service of the masters, receiving a salary in exchange. They became masters after performing a work that proved their ability and skill in the craft;
Apprentices, young people who learned the trade by working for years and receiving only room and board from the master until they could become companions.
Traders also sought to organize themselves into corporations to maintain the market traders from different cities joined together, forming a league. The most famous was the Hanseatic League, which brought together 80 German cities and commercially controlled northern Europe.
With the broad mercantile and artisanal development and the consequent increase in importance of the bourgeois class, the old feudal organization, composed of unproductive nobles and serfs tied to the land, was no longer adequate.
Feudal lords began to gain from trade, as they charged merchants with passage and establishment fees in their manors. Slave labor declined because, in addition to a large number of agricultural workers being diverted to the Crusades (11th and 12th century), many serfs fled to devote themselves to urban activities. Interested in increased production and greater profits, feudal lords freed serfs from compulsory labor. Some lords start to allow serfs to sell their products at fairs and in towns, as long as they pay them a sum of money. Others still began to use salaried farmers, paid by the day, we call day laborers.
Little by little, the power of feudal lords diminished, as did the submission of cities to their laws and taxes. Some of the most important merchants and master craftsmen began to organize themselves into a council, known as a commune. They were the ones who ran the cities, charging fees and taxes from their residents. It was these bourgeois communes that, from the twelfth century onwards, began to organize the struggle for the autonomy of cities. It was gradually conquered, either violently, when it armed itself and defeated the feudal lord of the region, or peacefully, when buying the city's independence, receiving the franchise letter from the feudal lord, which gave wide autonomy to the nuclei. urban.
The victory of these communal movements reflected the increasing importance of the bourgeoisie, a fact that would directly affect the events of the following centuries.
The Dirty and Cramped Medieval Cities
In the late Middle Ages, there was a rapid multiplication of the number of cities, in which commercial, manufacturing and artistic activities were carried out. The cities were garrisoned by ramparts that served to protect it from the invasions of nobles and bandits. Its inhabitants had managed to partially free themselves from the control of feudal lords, acquiring certain rights and freedoms that attracted large numbers of peasants. This immigration greatly increased the population of the cities, making it necessary to destroy them and rebuild the walls in order to expand the urban space. This procedure, however, was only accessible to large centers; in the other cities, houses and gardens were built even on top of the broad walls.
Thus, within the fenced limits of the cities, the land was very expensive and every centimeter was taken advantage of. The buildings, usually made of wood, were placed next to each other, and the upper floors were projected onto the streets, which were already narrow, making them even darker. The danger of fire was constant.
This uncontrollable demographic growth made it difficult to observe hygiene and comfort standards. The sanitary conditions were terrible:the garbage was dumped in the streets and its collection was in charge of the eventual rains; until that happened, piles of debris formed, settled by dogs and pigs. The water of the rivers and wells that supplied the city was frequently contaminated, causing constant outbreaks of typhus.
Throughout the 14th century and until the middle of the 15th century, Europe faced a series of circumstances that profoundly affected the lives of its population. Climate change brought several years in a row of heavy rain and cold, which caused the extermination of animals and crops, leading to a long period of famine; the black plague, originating in the Black Sea and transmitted by rats, decimated millions of Europeans already weakened by hunger.
In addition, the violence generated by the Hundred Years War gave rise to popular uprisings that claimed many lives.
The precarious urban conditions further aggravated the problems generated by these crises, as the Black Death alone, caused by poor hygiene conditions, caused Europe to lose more than half of its population.
In Britain, nuclear propulsion studies had been their train until the late 1950s, but progress was slow, and in 1958 an agreement was reached with the Americans for the complete supply of a reactor. This was installed on the Dreadnought which was the first British nuclear submarine, which entered se