To understand the economy of Europe in the EM period, we've got to understand both the largely rural landscape and the important place that towns held in it.

Rural life in the Early Modern period

Let's start by looking at a very strong myth about the rural life of pre-modern times:   It is "traditional society," unchanging, made up of self-sufficient communities, where every family produces most of what it needs, and knows next to nothing about the outside world.   "The average peasant never travelled farther than 50 miles (or whatever distance you like) from his place of birth."   Who came up with this historical cliche?  How could it ever be proved or disproved?

Holes in the myth:

Not everyone was a peasant farmer.   All sorts of people did other things:  shepherds, fishers, charcoal burners (who collected wood and made it into a necessary fuel).    There were tanners, thatchers, butchers, tinkers, smith, some part-time, some full-time.   Life was much more varied, economically and occupationally, than we often think

Life was far from immobile:   Basque, French and English fishers were off the course of Newfoundland a few  years after Columbus -- or maybe a few before.   Shepherds moved from highlands in the summer to lowlands in the winter.

Even peasant farmers could move about.    One can find a remote Norwegian village where 98% married people from the same parish.   But in a "backward" French village 30% married outsiders.

Towns and cities, of course, pulled in people from all over -- many of them from "peasant villages."
 

Note that in Western Europe at this time serfdom was in decline and so you don't have people legally tied to the land in any large numbers.

But there were indeed peasant farmers -- farmers dependent to some degree on people legally and socially superior to them, and usually owing them rent and sometimes other obligations.    There were a lot of them.    What was their position like?

They struggled for that self-sufficiency we all too easily grant them in our imagination.   Not only was this unattainable, it was often difficult just to feed the family, once obligations to outsiders were paid off.

A study of a region near Paris in the 17th c. by Pierre Goubert shows a pattern not uncommon in other medieval and early modern society.

• At the top of rural society (apart from resident nobility) were those who leased sizeable estates.   Rich peasants and non-peasants got such leases through their connections -- many were officials of noble or ecclesiastical landlords.   They were able to make a reasonable profit.
• Laboureurs were not "workers" in our sense, but the next class down, men who owned their own plowteams.   They were able to cultivate good sized family farms.   But even so they seldom avoided debt (taxes were a big problem).
• Haricotiers or "bean people" didn't have enough land to live on except in the best years.   In bad years they had to look for other work, if it was available.  Guess what they ate?
• Manouvriers  had only cottages and a scrap or two of land, and so depended on wage labor for others or domestic industry (weaving for instance) and were thus very vulnerable.

Most peasants did not own their land, but had to pay a variety of taxes, legal fines, and payments for milling, baking, access to pasturage and woodlots, to people who owned these rights (nobles and other landlords).   Tithes -- payments to the church -- existed in both Catholic and Protestant countries.   Those who got the tithes were not necessarily the local clergyman, who might merely be hired by the owner of those rights -- perhaps a layman, the prince, or a bishop or monastery far away.

Commercial farming on a large scale existed in some parts of Europe in the EM period.  For the rural worker, this was not an improvement, because it turned them into a landless proletariat entirely at the mercy of the landlords.

For peasants, landlords were often the enemy.   However, there were a number of ways in which peasants and landlords cooperated, and there was competition between well-off peasants and the very poor, whom they tried to exclude from common pasturage or other resources.

An interesting example of the complexities of life in the country can be seen in the numerous rural revolts that took place in the EM period.   Was this an attack on the rich noble landowner?   Not necessarily!   Often the enemy was royal or princely officials and taxpayers, and both peasants and nobles (though never the highest nobles) might temporarily unite to attack this outside menace.   On the other hand, if the rebels started attacking local notables to pay off old scores, even quite humble people might go over to the cause of law and order and help put down the rebels.

Urban economy at the beginning of the Early Modern Period

A great deal of the production of EM Europe took place on the land.   Also, just about all the major fortunes of Europe -- and these were noble fortunes -- were based on hereditary holdings (or in the case of the occasional new rich, investments) in land.

However, a great many specialized economic and cultural functions took place in the cities of EM Europe, and the most advanced areas were also the most urbanized ones.   If most people did not live in cities, cities were still extremely important.

(Discussion, in class, of the distribution of urban wealth as measured by papal revenue, and correlated to the size of cities.)

Even in areas where there were no major cosmopolitan centers, there were plenty of market towns and smaller cities:   the example of England and Wales (in class).

All of Europe was part of an interlocking network of exchange, with cities as the nodes.

(Venetian and Genoan trade.)

(Itinerary of Bruges showing Flemish connections to the continent.)

(The Hanseatic League, showing northern trade routes.)

(Nurnberg's trade routes.)

(Armenian trade routes.)

Every conceivable route was being used by merchants and peddlers seeking profit.

Some of the most obvious trade was the trade with Asia for "spices" (not just our spices, but all sorts of eastern luxuries).   Italy thrived on being the main European middleman in this trade.   However there was lots of trade in non-luxuries, and European manufactures, too.

(Cattle drives.)

Francesco Datini's cloth dealings around 1400 shows how "globalization" was a fact of life for many people around 1400.  (Details in class.)

This discussion has put the focus on traders and especially a rich one like Datini.   However the carders, weavers, dyers, and finishers who worked his cloth, though not all lived in the city, were part of an urban economy, too.

Those who lived in cities lived a faster and more varied life than their country cousins.   And even those who were not rich might lack a proper submissiveness towards the nobles of the court or of rural estates.   Much of urban wealth was produced and controlled by people who were "common" even if they were prosperous or even rich.    This was in part because a true noble abstained from any kind of degrading work.   Managing one's own estates, even taking an active interest in one's horses and cattle, was fine, as was politics, warfare and hunting.   But being involved in the hurly-burly of the workshop or marketplace marked one as "common."

Thus the moneyed men who were actively concerned with the day to day running of businesses and banks could not claim nobility  (though they might marry their children into the nobility if they were really well-connected).

Noble disdain for active work, then, helped produce men who were less humble than their betters thought they
should be; indeed, in some places they were had developed a confident, literate culture of their own.  Long
before Protestantism came into existence, they were a hard-driving, thrifty, prudent bunch, who wrote "In the name of God and profit" on the front pages of their ledgers.  They were men with a necessarily wide horizon, who had to be literate and well-informed about the world.

Finally, it should be mentioned that EM Europe, especially the 15th and 16th centuries, were a period when entire urban communties asserted their importance.   In parts of Italy, Germany, Belgium and Holland, urban communities had slipped out of the control, partially or wholly, of the landed nobility.

In independent or autonomous city states like Florence, Venice, or Nurnberg, or in a small county like Flanders where urban industry or commerce were extremely important, merchants enjoyed the support and sympathy of governments that they either
controlled or heavily influenced.  In much of Europe, princes whose power was based on landholding primarily were easily tempted into levying ruinous taxes on their merchants, or restricting them in other ways.   It was a new, heady era of urban self-confidence, and we'll see the effects of this confidence at later points.

Much of the energy of the Italian Renaissance and the similar Northern Renaissance of Germany and the North came from this milieu.  If we remember the determination that moved the wool from Minorca to Prato and back, the Renaissance becomes much more explicable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fernand Braudel,  The Structures of Everyday Life  and  The Wheels of Commerce
Iris Origo,  The Merchant of Prato 
Steven Ozment,  Magdelena and Bathalzar
N.J.G. Pounds,  An Economic History of Medieval Europe
 
 
                  TEN LARGEST EUROPEAN CITIES -- A.D. 1400

            Paris                                        275,000
            Milan                                       125,000
            Bruges                                     125,000
            Venice                                     110,000
            Granada                                   100,000
            Genoa                                      100,000
            Prague                                       95,000
            Caffa                                         85,000
            Seville                                       70,000
            Ghent                                        70,000
 

Copyright (C) 1999, Steven Muhlberger.