during the clearance movements led to the emancipation of most of the others from labor
services by the 13th century except for a few areas in imperial Flanders. The chronology
of clearances suggests a strong population growth in the central Middle Ages and relative
overpopulation by 1250. Many rural tenements had been subdivided into units that were
too small to sustain households, although this in turn promoted efficient agriculture and
high seed yields. Flemish farming practice, emphasizing multiple sowings each year and
intensive cultivation of the fallow and of industrial and fodder crops and animal
husbandry, was the most technically advanced of Europe.
Flemish commerce in the 11th and 12th centuries was chiefly with England for wool
and with the Rhineland for wine, in return for which Flanders exported finished cloth.
The counts’ economic policies included furthering a cycle of five fairs. Flanders became
the most densely urbanized region of northern Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries.
While Bruges was a largely commercial city, albeit with a substantial textile industry, the
prosperity of Ghent, Ypres, and most of the smaller towns was based on the manufacture
of cloth—heavy, luxury textiles for export in the case of Ghent and Ypres. The smaller
communities, particularly in southern Flanders, used cheaper wools to make lighter
textiles for export to Spain and Italy. The mixed cloths of many villages of western
Flanders in the late Middle Ages found a considerable export market in the Baltic areas
of Germany. Linen was also important in the villages and some of the larger towns,
notably Ghent.
The mid-13th century also witnessed the first signs of social conflict in the Flemish
cities, which were racked by strikes of textile artisans who resented the domination of the
great entrepreneurs. Flanders was struck by the plagues of the late Middle Ages but
suffered less than its neighbors. The most severe epidemics seem to have been those of
1368–69 and 1400, rather than that of 1348–49. By 1469, over one-third of the
inhabitants of northern Flanders lived in cities. By this time, however, the great Flemish
cities had passed their peak. Considerable industry was moving to the rural areas, and
Brabant, Flanders’s eastern neighbor, was nearly as densely urbanized.
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