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1 results

  • 3 - Towns and the Growth of Trade

  • Edited by David Luscombe, University of Sheffield, Jonathan Riley-Smith, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 October 2004, pp 47-85

  • Summary

    During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, most of Europe was distinctly backward and peripheral by comparison with areas south of the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, which were highly commercialised and urbanised and under Muslim control. There were two distinctive core areas for urban growth: northern Italy and the territories bordering the southern part of the North Sea and the English Channel and extending up the Rhine. The most fundamental stimulus to urban and commercial growth was that of rural development and population increase. The interaction between local resources and lordship shaped patterns of urban growth, especially for small towns. Some of the largest and most populous cities owed their standing to their handling of a transit trade and to their role as centres for collecting and redistributing goods. The rapid growth of towns promoted commercial solutions to the basic problems of supply, and this in turn encouraged specialised agriculture.