A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

22 Ch. 1 • Medieval Legacies and Transforming Discoveries

Bankers sitting behind their banco (counter) doing

business.

extraction of iron, copper, and silver quadrupled, for example, in Central

Europe. Large-scale production, however, was limited to mining and tex­

tiles, as well as to arms manufacturing and shipbuilding.

The production of textiles, whether for distant markets or local con­

sumption, dominated the manufacturing economy. Techniques for the pro­

duction of silk had been imported from China into Europe by Arabs in the

tenth century. First centered in the Italian states, production spread dur­

ing the second half of the fifteenth century across the Alps to the German

states, France, and Spain, which no longer depended on imported silk

from Persia and Asia.

The manufacture of cloth developed in Tuscany, northern France, Flan­

ders, and the Netherlands. The woolens industry of Flanders, which had

begun during the medieval period, boomed, centered in the towns of Ypres,

Ghent, and Bruges. England, which continued to export wool to the conti­

nent, became a major producer of woolen goods in the fourteenth century.

Antwerp emerged as Europe’s first important center of international trade.

Urban merchants and artisans were organized into guilds, which regu­

lated production and distribution, thus protecting, at least in principle, guild

members and consumers. The structure of craft production was organized

hierarchically. Apprentices who learned their craft became journeymen and,

if all went well, could eventually become masters, joining a masters’ guild

and employing journeymen and training apprentices. Most cloth was fin­

ished in towns by craft artisans. Through the guilds, masters could preserve

the quality of work within their particular trades and, at the same time, the

reputations of their town. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it

became increasingly difficult for journeymen to become independent master

craftsmen. Early in the sixteenth century, some German journeymen refused

to work for masters who paid them less than they desired or had been used

to receiving.