CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. Medieval Technology: Energy, Tools, and

Transport

III. The Agricultural Revolution of the Eleventh and

Twelfth Centuries

IV. The Commercial Revolution

V. The Growth of Towns

A. Italy and the Emergence of the City-States

B. The Cities of Northern Europe

C. Town Life in the Middle Ages

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CHAPTER 10

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND URBAN

GROWTH IN THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

T

wo centuries of relative peace and prosperity

after the end of the great raids permitted a

general increase in agricultural production.

This growth in productivity increased real

wealth and allowed the population of Europe to dou-

ble during the same period. It also encouraged agricul-

tural specialization, which led to the development

of a widespread trade in bulk agricultural commodities.

Eventually, new wealth and the influence of the

Crusades created a long-distance trade in luxury

goods as well.

The chief beneficiaries of this new commercial ac-

tivity were the towns. From about 1000 to 1250 they

experienced rapid growth—in size, wealth, and power.

As popes and princes grew more dependent upon their

resources, the towns used their wealth to free them-

selves from feudal or ecclesiastical rule and to negotiate

new privileges that made them bastions of civic free-

dom in the midst of feudal Europe. Some became sov-

ereign states. Rich, free, and self-confident, the towns

of medieval Europe began the great tradition of urban

culture that would eventually leaven the whole of

Western society.

Medieval Technology: Energy,

Tools, and Transport

Medieval technology, like that of the Romans, was

based on wood and iron. Its primary energy source re-

mained the muscle power of humans or animals,

though by the eleventh century water mills were uni-

versally employed for the grinding of grain. The water

wheel had been used in Anatolia as early as the first

century, but it was apparently unknown in the west un-

til the brewers of Picardy adopted it around 820. By the

mid-thirteenth century water power was also used in

the fulling of cloth and to drive the hammers and bel-

lows of forges. Wind provided assistance for ships at

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