Economic Development In The Medieval Europe

Economic development in the medieval Europe
Cameron Chapter 3

The Agrarian Basis
From the ancient city-states of Sumer to the Roman Empire, urban institutions determined the character of the economy and society, even though most of the population was engaged in agricultural labor. In medieval Europe, on the other hand, although the urban population grew in size and importance, especially inItaly and Flanders, agrarian and rural institutions set the tone.

Political and social conditions that surrounds the origin of the medieval economy: the growing burden of taxation and the increasing inefficiency and corruption of the Roman Empire, the final breakdown of central authority and the resulting anarchy, the grow of large self-sufficient estates, and the decline of towns andinterregional trade. Petty kingdoms rose and fell but were unable to maintain effective order for more that brief periods or to establish regular systems of taxation.

Beginning in the eighth century, new hordes of invaders threatened the Franks and other Europeans for more than two centuries. In 711 Muslims from North Africa invaded Spain and quickly overthrew its Visigothic kingdom; by 732 they hadpenetrated as far as central France before being turned back. Although the Franks drove the Muslims back across the Pyrenees, the latter conquered Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia and turned the Mediterranean into virtually a Muslim lake.
Later in the century the Vikings dominated the British Isles, conquered Normandy, raided coastal and riverine sites as far inland as Paris, and even penetrated theMediterranean. In the ninth century Magyar tribesmen crossed the Carpathians into central Europe and raided, pillaged and extract tribute in northern Italy, southern Germany and Easter France before settling down in the following century in their newly chosen homeland in the Hungarian plain.
To meet this treats the Frankish kings devised a system of military and political relationships, calledfeudalism. It grants the warriors the income from great estates, many of which were confiscated from the church, in return for military service; the warriors-lords and knights- were also charged with maintaining order and administering justice on their estates.
Great nobles- dukes, counts and marquises-had many estates encompassing many villages; some of this they granted to lesser lords or knights,their vassals, in return for an oath of homage and fealty, similar to that witch they gave to the king; this procedure was called subinfeudation.

Manorialism began to take shape under the later Roman Empire, when the latifundia (large farms) Of Roman nobles were transformed into self-sufficient estates, and cultivators were bound to the soil either by legislation or by more direct andimmediate economic and social pressures. The barbarian invasions modified the system, mainly by introducing tribal chieftains and warriors into the ruling class, and minorialism received its “definitive” stamp in the eighth and ninth centuries, during the Saracen, Viking, and Magyar invasions, when it became the economic basis of the feudal system.
Some areas, such as Scotland, Norway and the Balkans,were never effectively manorialized; even within the areas of manorial economy some regions, usually hilly or mountainous, maintained different forms of organization. There was no such thing as a typical manor. Variations, both geographical and chronological, were far to numerous. As an organizational and administrative unit, the manor consisted of land, buildings, and the people who cultivated theformer and inhabited the latter. Functionally, the land was divided into arable, pasture and meadow, and woodland, forest, or waste. Legally, it was divided into the lord´s demesne (since the word domain has a more general meaning, the Anglicized French is preferred for this special meaning), peasant holdings, and common land.
Although the ideal might have been one manor, one village,...