Medieval Legacies and Transforming Discoveries

Medieval Legacies and Transforming Discoveries

Chapter – 1

Anviksha Paradkar

Psychology (BHU)

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Jacob Fugger (1455-1525) was a son of a weaver from Augsburg, Germany, who joined his brothers in trading spices, silks, and woolen goods at age fourteen.
He learned double-entry bookkeeping in Venice, which was unknown in the German states at the time.
Jacob Fugger amassed a vast fortune and began lending significant sums to rulers across Central Europe, becoming renowned throughout the region and even beyond.
Fugger’s wealth and influence grew, and he played a key role in financing states and securing political power, including helping Charles V become Holy Roman Emperor in 1519.
The Fugger family’s financial support facilitated the consolidation of territorial states and a dynamic economy across Europe, including the Mediterranean region and northwestern Europe.
The growth of trade and manufacturing in this period contributed to a sense of rebirth and revitalization among Europeans, aligning with the Renaissance movement spreading from Italy into northern Europe.
Despite challenges such as famine, disease, and war, improvements in the standard of living occurred, with Europe’s population rising from about 70 million in 1500 to around 90 million in 1600.
This population increase, following the devastating Black Death, revived European commerce and led to prosperous towns and merchants building elegant houses.
Key inventions of the era included gunpowder, which made warfare more deadly and reduced the role of heavily armed knights, and the printing press, which democratized access to texts and fostered a cultural revolution.
The compass, used by Chinese and Mediterranean navigators earlier, became crucial for guiding European exploration across the oceans.
Spanish and Portuguese conquerors and merchants established the first European transoceanic empires in the New World.
The combination of population growth, trade and manufacturing expansion, new technologies like gunpowder and the compass, and the development of printing facilitated the establishment of European colonies across the oceans.

Medieval Continuities

England and France emerged as sovereign states, distinct from the territorial fragmentation of medieval Europe.
Smaller territories began to coalesce into larger units, with rulers consolidating and extending their authority.
European society settled into a three-order structure—clergy, nobles, and peasants—where each group had mutual obligations to the others.
Most peasants continued to live at a subsistence level, but overall material well-being improved as commercial trade expanded.
The eleventh century saw an increase in commercial trade over greater distances.
Small-scale textile manufacturing began to develop, especially in Italy and northwestern Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The Fragmentation of Europe

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, Europe saw an influx of new peoples.
The Magyars (Hungarians) came from the east and settled in Central Europe, eventually converting to Christianity.
The Northmen (Norse or Vikings) from Scandinavia reached Ukraine and mostly became Christians.
Arabs invaded Europe in the eighth century, expanding their influence into North Africa and Spain.
Mongols invaded Russia and Ukraine, sacking Kiev in the 1230s, but their empire began to collapse in the fifteenth century.
The princely state of Muscovy, a tributary to the Mongols, expanded into a dynastic state reaching the southern Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea.
These diverse influences contributed to the political and cultural fragmentation of Europe.
By 1500, Europe was composed of about 1,500 fragmented states with local economic, political, and judicial institutions.
Territorial and city jurisdictions were often confused and overlapping, with some city-states and trading towns preserving their independence.
Town walls symbolized urban privileges and provided protection against bandits and disease.
Europe’s legal systems included civil, canon, and customary law.
Civil law, evolving from Roman law, was based on written laws and contributed to the development of sovereign states.
Canon law, established by the pope, affirmed the authority of spiritual rulers through religious principles.
Customary or common law codified established customs and was used in areas without Roman law, reflecting decentralized power structures.
In England, common law unified customary law and was overseen by local courts, contributing to the decentralization of royal authority.
Customary law allowed groups and individuals to assert their interests and rights, sometimes overriding royal intervention.
Europe’s political fragmentation was mirrored by cultural fragmentation, with many languages spoken and difficulties in travel and communication.
Latin remained the language of culture in university towns, such as the “Latin Quarter” in Paris.
Travel times were long, with mail taking months to arrive and journeys between cities like Madrid and Venice taking up to twenty-two days or more in bad weather.
Europe was a crossroads between civilizations and religions, with a split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church following the Great Schism of 1054.
By 1500, the Eastern Orthodox Church was predominant in Russia and the Balkans, while the Roman Catholic and Orthodox worlds met in Central Europe, influencing regions like Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary.
Christianity, claiming to be a universal state with its own language (Latin), presented a potential impediment to state authority and provided a common culture across much of Europe.
Centralization of both the Church and monarchies led to inevitable conflicts between them.
The Church had been a centralized authority since the end of the Roman Empire, with the papacy in Rome independent of secular rule.
By the middle of the eleventh century, popes were elected by cardinals appointed by previous popes, with bishops and abbots pledging obedience to the pope in return for tenure and revenues.
In the Ottoman Empire, religious and political sovereignty were combined in the sultan, unlike European rulers who sought autonomy from Church authority.
Despite the Church’s wealth and power (owning substantial land in Catalonia, Castile, and southern Italy), princes resisted Church interference in their territories.
During the medieval period, Western Christians sought to reclaim lands conquered by Muslims, including Jerusalem, leading to eight Crusades from 1095 to 1270.
In 1204, Crusaders, viewing Eastern Orthodox Christianity as heresy, conquered the Byzantine Empire, which stretched from eastern Italy to the Black Sea.
By the mid-fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks had conquered much of Anatolia, the Balkan Peninsula, and Greece.
By 1400, Islam extended from southern Spain and North Africa to northern India and Southeast Asia.
The Byzantine Empire, reduced to a small area around Constantinople (modern Istanbul), fell to the Ottomans after a siege in 1453.
The Ottomans expanded their territory significantly in the late fifteenth century, conquering Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Herzegovina, and Hungary, extending to the Danube River.
The Ottoman military was large, with a strong navy and an army recruited from converts to Islam, including the janissaries.
Ottoman diplomacy complemented their military strength, leading to further expansion into Egypt, Iran, and Baghdad in the 1530s.
At its height, the Ottoman Empire employed loyal local elites to generate revenue and had a diverse population including many Christians.
Despite Western depictions of the Ottomans as barbaric, the empire allowed religious diversity, with non-Muslims maintaining significant numbers and autonomy under the millet system.
The Ottoman Turks ruled a large semicircle of states, leading Western powers to defensive wars against them, including constructing fortifications along the Adriatic coast by the Venetians.

The Structure of Society

Medieval society was divided into three main social groups: the clergy, who prayed and cared for souls; the nobles, who governed and fought; and the peasants, who labored in the fields. Burghers, town residents whose entrepreneurial activities contributed to the economic dynamism of medieval Europe between 1000 and 1350, were outside this classical typology despite their increasing importance.
The clergy had various roles including priests, teachers, judges, nurses, landlords, and chaplains. They could only be tried in ecclesiastical courts, and their distinct status would later be questioned in the evolution of the modern state. The secular clergy, who were priests not belonging to a specific religious order, ministered to the general population. Most of the secular clergy were as poor as their parishioners, but bishops were usually from noble families. The regular clergy included monks and nuns living in monasteries and convents under strict religious rules, often legally considered dead to the outside world.
Nobles owned most of the land, deriving their status and income from it, as well as from their military functions. Noble titles denoted superiority of birth, and noble families typically intermarried. Nobles were expected to avoid manual labor and focus on defending their monarch and family honor.
Peasants, making up about 85% of the population in 1500, lived on noble lands and depended on nobles for protection in exchange for labor. They generally had no legal status except for landowners in some regions. Peasants were often considered barely better than animals by lords and clergy.
Villages and parishes formed the universe of most Europeans, with local solidarities taking precedence over allegiance to state rulers. Many villages were virtually self-governing, with councils making decisions about agricultural practices and coexistence with seigneurial authority.
At least a fifth of the population lived in dire poverty, with ordinary laborers spending three-quarters of their earnings on food. Towns and cities were crowded with poor people struggling for survival. The poor often wandered seeking work, begging, or stealing. Charity, encouraged by the Catholic Church, helped many survive, but poor outsiders, particularly gypsies, were often feared.
Banditry was widespread in various regions, including between Venetian and Turkish territories, the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples, and in the Pyrenees Mountains. Robin Hood, a thirteenth-century English bandit, had continental counterparts.

Feudalism

Feudalism developed during the ninth and tenth centuries in response to the collapse of territorial rulers’ authority. Between 980 and 1030, law and order broke down in Europe, leading to widespread violence, warfare, and predatory bands. The feudal power structure (king, lords, vassals, and peasants) emerged as a reaction to this instability and was shaped by the agricultural economy dominated by large estates.
A crucial distinction remained between kings and lords. Kings were anointed in a sacred rite by ecclesiastical authorities, claiming to rule “by the grace of God.” Lords, however, wielded practical power over vassals, who owed them loyalty and military service. In exchange, vassals received protection and land use (fiefs), while lords retained rights over these lands. Vassals had obligations such as fighting for the lord for a certain number of days each year and paying fees upon inheriting estates. Lords resolved disputes among vassals, and feudal relationships were solidified through solemn oaths and elaborate ceremonies.
The mutual obligations of lords and vassals were hierarchical, with the more powerful extracting revenue or services from the less powerful, particularly from the peasants, who occupied the lowest social rank and were the weakest in the system.
Feudalism began to decline in the late fourteenth century with the emergence of stronger state structures and the reassertion of the Roman Catholic Church’s authority. As monarchies grew stronger, royal courts increasingly usurped the judicial authority of nobles, although this process was incomplete in some regions.
The development of a money economy made feudal relationships obsolete. Peasants increasingly paid lords in cash rather than services, crops, or animals, signifying a shift in economic relationships.
The Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century played a major role in the decline of feudalism by killing one-third to one-half of Europe’s population. Labor shortages caused wages to rise, and peasants were able to improve their legal status. Many lords died during the plague, further destabilizing the feudal system.
When lords attempted to reimpose feudal obligations, peasants rebelled, leading to significant uprisings, including revolts in Flanders (1323–1328), northern France (the Jacquerie of 1358), and the Peasants’ Revolt in England (1381). Urban unrest also grew as the poor resisted efforts to return to the old system.
States took advantage of the chaos by imposing new taxes, such as the hearth tax on households. As monarchies strengthened, they gradually brought the feudal era to a close by increasing their authority and diminishing the independence of nobles.

A Subsistence Economy

Agriculture formed the foundation of the European economy, with land ownership being the main determinant of social status. Peasants engaged in a constant struggle against nature, often losing due to poor-quality land, hilly or rocky terrain, and marshland unsuitable for farming. Small plots, exhausted soil, and traditional farming techniques limited crop yields.
Peasants used hand “swing” plows and had to clear and terrace steep slopes by hand. Some land in villages was held in common, originally granted by lords, which although economically inefficient, was vital for the survival of the landless poor. Peasants had to save part of their seeds for replanting the next year.
Lords claimed much of what peasants produced, extracting rents and other forms of payment. Over time, many lords preferred renting land to peasants and accepting cash payments instead of labor, using this money to buy goods, including luxury items like silk, cotton, and spices from the Levant.
Peasants also had to pay a tithe (10 percent of their revenue) to the Church. Initially paid in-kind, these tithes were increasingly monetized in the late Middle Ages. This left rural families, who relied on subsistence farming, with little to live on.
Labor shortages in the thirteenth century forced lords to grant peasants better terms, allowing many peasants to purchase their freedom and transform their labor obligations into cash rents. However, even free peasants had to pay feudal dues and fees for access to monopolized services like grain milling, beer brewing, or bread baking.
Serfdom began to decline in France and southern England in the twelfth century. Free peasants could be taxed by rulers, unlike serfs who were legally tied to the land. The growth of a free peasantry in Western Europe reflected increasing royal authority and the decline of noble power.
In contrast, peasants in Eastern and Central Europe lost their freedom and were forced into serfdom during the sixteenth century as landowners sought a stable labor supply, reflecting noble territorial domination independent of royal authority, as seen in places like Poland.
Many peasants, peddlers, artisans, and laborers moved across Europe in search of work, land, or better opportunities. Shepherds practiced transhumance, moving their sheep between lowland and highland pastures, while seasonal migrants from mountainous regions took up construction work in towns or followed harvests.
Most poor families survived on a diet primarily consisting of bread, with little else. Meat was reserved for the wealthy, while vegetables and fruit were scarce. Rye bread, soup, peas, cabbage, and beans were staples, depending on the region. Chestnut grain was a key food for the poor in southern France, while olives, wine, and wheat dominated the Mediterranean diet. Beer was more common in northern Europe.
Agricultural growth, which had been steady until the early fourteenth century, slowed after the Black Death. As the population recovered, land previously abandoned was plowed again, and in fertile regions, the “three-field system” became more common, leaving one-third of the land fallow to replenish fertility.
The three-field system required sizable landholdings and could not be implemented on small peasant plots, but it improved agricultural yields in the long run. However, peasant families were often forced to prioritize cultivation for their lord over supplementing their family economy through activities like hunting, fishing, or livestock care.
Farming techniques and tools improved during the fifteenth century, with innovations such as mills and metal harvesting implements, though some regions were slow to adopt them. These methods remained largely unchanged until the nineteenth century.
Free peasants contributed to increased agricultural production, and not all peasants were destitute. A minority of peasants prospered, especially when famine, disease, and war did not interfere, allowing them to sell surplus produce in markets after fulfilling obligations to their lords and the Church.
The growth of the European population during the medieval period depended on modest increases in agricultural yields. Some lords became market-oriented farmers in response to rising population levels, further boosting production.
Urban growth encouraged cash-crop farming, enriching landlords, merchants, and wealthy peasants. Prosperous agricultural regions included the Po River Valley in Italy, the plains of Valencia in Spain, and the Beauce region between the Loire River and Paris. Landowners expanded cultivation by clearing forests, draining marshes and swamps, and, where possible, irrigating arid fields.

Religion and Popular Culture

Religion played a central role in the lives of Europeans during the Middle Ages, with Christianity shaping a system of beliefs and values that influenced how people viewed themselves and their world. The Church, having preserved faith and learning during the Dark Ages, saw itself as a unifying force in Europe.
Clergy held great prestige and moral authority as the distributors of sacraments, particularly penance, which Christians believed was necessary for salvation. When preachers visited villages, people waited long into the night for their confessions to be heard.
Pilgrimages were an important religious practice, with one of the most popular routes leading to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The Church also blessed oaths of fealty between vassals and lords and played a key role in the rites of passage, including birth, marriage, and death.
While the Italian Renaissance rediscovered human dignity, it did so within the context of Christian belief. Religious themes dominated medieval art and music, and in the twelfth century, magnificent Gothic cathedrals began to be built. These massive constructions often took centuries to complete and were funded by contributions from people of all social classes.
Church bells marked the hours and called people to Mass, as clocks remained novelties until the late sixteenth century. Western Christendom was intertwined with Western civilization, though Muslim and Jewish communities maintained strong presences in places like Spain and Turkish-controlled areas.
Jews were generally outcasts, though they did not live separately from Christians until the fifteenth century, when civil and ecclesiastical authorities began enforcing such separation. Jews in Rome were forced to wear distinctive badges, and Venice established the first Jewish ghetto in 1516. Many Jews, restricted from entering certain trades, wandered in search of peaceful towns.
Storytellers, both amateur and professional, preserved oral traditions in a largely illiterate society. They passed down tales during evening gatherings, where villagers, especially women, mended garments and kept warm while listening to stories. Many of these tales reflected the fatalism of a society where people often died young.
Most people believed in magic and the supernatural, thinking that sorcerers, saints, or primitive healers could intervene between them and misfortune. For example, villagers believed rubbing certain saints’ images could bring good luck, and when the wine harvest failed in parts of France, they whipped statues of saints.
Superstitions were widespread, such as the belief that encountering certain animals like wolves, deer, or bears was a good omen, or that a stork landing on a house promised wealth and longevity. Seeing a white-robed monk in the morning was considered a bad sign, while a black-robed monk was a good one. In some places, garlic was believed to ward off evil.
Beliefs in cunning folk and witches were common, with cunning men thought to possess the ability to determine the outcome of earthly events. For instance, a cunning man might discover a thief’s identity by placing names inside clay balls, with the guilty party’s name being the first to unravel in water.
The calendar year was marked by religious holidays and festivals, which were often aligned with the agricultural calendar. Before Lent, in some parts of Western Europe, young men carried torches of blazing straw through villages to ensure agricultural and sexual fertility.
Carnival was the highlight of the year for many, offering a time for feasting, drinking, and playful mischief. People tossed flour, eggs, and fruit at each other and participated in games. Carnival temporarily inverted social norms, allowing the poor to act out the misdeeds of the wealthy through elaborate plays and parades, mocking judges, nobles, and clergymen.

The Emergence of Early Modern Europe

The late Middle Ages brought significant economic, social, and political changes that shaped the emergence of early modern Europe.
Following the devastation of the Black Death in the 14th century, Europe’s population slowly revived and grew.
More land was cultivated, leading to a greater food supply, but famine, disease, and war still frequently hindered population growth.
Trade and manufacturing developed rapidly, particularly in the Mediterranean region (especially the Italian city-states) and in northwestern Europe.
Prosperous banking families provided capital for traders, manufacturers, and states, aiding the evolution of credit transfer mechanisms.
Trade with Asia and the Middle East grew rapidly, eventually rivaling Europe’s trade with the Muslim world.
Towns expanded, and their merchants became more prosperous, reflecting the significance of trade and textile manufacturing in urban growth.
Some wealthy merchant families purchased land and noble titles, causing resentment among the old nobility, who believed “The king could make a nobleman, but not a gentleman.”
The entrepreneurial elite in Western European towns grew increasingly independent from territorial rulers, as seen in the rise of guilds and other organizations symbolizing a more dynamic economy.
Between 1350 and 1450, rulers in France, Spain, England, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Hungary consolidated their authority, reducing the influence of feudal lords and ecclesiastical authorities.
The Iberian Peninsula was divided between Castile and Aragon (joined in 1469 through the marriage of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to form modern Spain) and Portugal, whose borders have remained unchanged since the late Middle Ages.
The basic layout of three Scandinavian states was already established.
Important East Central and Central European states, such as Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland-Lithuania (a confederation formed in 1386), were reasonably well defined by this time. Poland-Lithuania, by the early 16th century, stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
The Swiss cantonal federation had also emerged by this period.
Most small territorial fragments remained in the German states or Italy.

A Rising Population

Europe’s population nearly doubled between 1000 and 1300, rising from about 40 million to 75 million.
In the early 14th century, the population began to decline due to rampant disease.
The Black Death struck Europe in the mid-14th century, killing between a third and half of the population.
The bubonic plague, spread by fleas carried by rats, reached Constantinople from Asia in 1347 and spread rapidly across Europe within three years.
Victims of the plague died horrible deaths, with some succumbing in a few days and others lingering in agony.
Some villages were completely abandoned as people fled the plague’s path.
States and cities attempted to prevent the arrival of travelers, fearing they carried the plague.
For the next century, population growth remained stagnant, with deaths and births balanced, particularly in cities where high mortality rates negated the higher birth rates in the countryside.
Europe began to recover during the second half of the 15th century, thanks to fewer epidemics and a lack of destructive wars.
The population did not reach its pre-1300 level until around 1550, when it started to rise rapidly, especially in northern Europe.
Europeans remained vulnerable to diseases like influenza, typhus, malaria, typhoid, and smallpox, which disproportionately affected the poor due to inadequate nutrition.
Europeans also feared bad weather, which could ruin harvests, leading to famine and population checks.
Famines regularly devastated Europe, killing infants, children, and the elderly in large numbers.
Life expectancy for those who survived infancy and childhood was about 40 years, with women typically living longer than men, though many died during childbirth.
About a fifth of all babies born died before their first birthday, and less than half of those born lived to the age of 20.
Only about a fifth of the population lived to celebrate their 40th birthday.
In towns, deaths often outnumbered births each year, with prosperous families having more children than poorer ones.
The exposure and abandonment of infants were common, and couples may have limited births through sexual abstinence.
Premature death of one partner also limited family sizes, as did the relatively late age of marriage.
Most English men married between 26 and 29 years old, and women between 24 and 26 years old.
Marriage was important for economic reasons, and many marriages were arranged, with parents playing a significant role in choosing partners.
For wealthier families, especially nobles, a sizable dowry was often a deciding factor in marriage arrangements.
By the late 16th century, in some areas like England, the preferences of the bride and groom were increasingly considered in marriage arrangements.
For the poor, marriage could provide opportunities for improving one’s situation, and young women with dowries or skills, and young men with trades, were seen as attractive marriage prospects.
Wives were legally subservient to their husbands, but in poor households, their roles as managers of income and workers gave them some degree of equality.
Sexual infidelity was common but frowned upon, as it ran against popular beliefs in loyalty and mutual obligation within marriage.
Infidelity could also disrupt inheritance systems by introducing unanticipated offspring, in an era with limited and rudimentary contraceptive techniques.
Around a fifth of English brides were pregnant at the time of their wedding, as premarital sexual relations between couples expecting to marry were common.
Kinship and village solidarity were central to the lives of ordinary people, with extended families living together in some areas, while nuclear families were more common in places like England.
Children of lower-class families began working at 14 or 15, or earlier as apprentices, and their obligations to their parents continued, though many left home in search of work and rarely returned.
The poor relied on family and neighbors for assistance in bad times, as well as for help with harvests if they owned land.

An Expanding Economy

Beginning in the eleventh century, medieval society experienced a marked expansion in trade and manufacture.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, merchants significantly increased the transportation of goods via land routes and low galley ships along the Mediterranean coastline.
Mediterranean goods such as olive oil, fruit, and wine were traded for timber, cereals, and salted herring in the markets of Flanders and northern France.
A money economy slowly developed alongside increased commercial activity, though barter remained crucial for peasants who lived in a subsistence economy.
In some mountainous regions, currency still had limited penetration.
The late Middle Ages saw a notable rise in the availability of credit for states and entrepreneurs.
By the thirteenth century, banking families in Venice and other Italian city-states were well-established.
Some merchants transitioned from itinerant travelers to sedentary entrepreneurs capable of raising capital through borrowing from banking families or other merchants and moneylenders.
Merchants began using bills of exchange, which facilitated payments in different countries and currencies at future dates.
Merchant work on a commission basis and specialization in the transportation of goods became more common.
Double-entry bookkeeping allowed merchants to track profits and losses, contributing to a commercial boom by the sixteenth century.
Although a multiplicity of states and tolls hindered commerce, trade continued to grow.
The sixteenth century brought significant growth in basic manufacturing, with some regions experiencing a 500 percent increase.
The extraction of resources like iron, copper, and silver quadrupled in Central Europe.
Large-scale production was mainly limited to mining, textiles, arms manufacturing, and shipbuilding.
The textile industry, particularly silk and wool production, dominated the manufacturing economy.
Silk production techniques, introduced by Arabs from China in the tenth century, spread from the Italian states to the German states, France, and Spain in the fifteenth century.
European countries, particularly Italy and later France and Spain, reduced dependence on imported silk from Persia and Asia.
Cloth manufacturing flourished in regions like Tuscany, northern France, Flanders, and the Netherlands.
The wool industry of Flanders, centered in Ypres, Ghent, and Bruges, boomed during this period.
England emerged as a major wool producer in the fourteenth century, exporting both raw wool and finished woolen goods.
Antwerp became Europe’s first significant center for international trade.
Urban merchants and artisans organized themselves into guilds, which regulated production and distribution to protect members and consumers.
Guilds structured craft production hierarchically, with apprentices, journeymen, and masters.
Masters controlled the quality of work and the reputation of their trades, but by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it became harder for journeymen to become independent masters.
By the early sixteenth century, some German journeymen refused to work for masters who paid them lower wages than they expected.
Some craftsmen operated outside city walls or in rural areas to avoid guild regulations and wage constraints.
Merchant-capitalists often outsourced spinning, weaving, and other work to rural labor, where it was cheaper.
Between 1450 and 1550, rural production spread rapidly in northern Italy, the Netherlands, northern France, and England.
Hundreds of thousands of peasants produced yarn or wove cloth, which was then processed (dyed, bleached, or shrunk) by urban workers and sold by merchants.
The “cottage industry,” or domestic industry, would remain an essential part of the manufacturing process well into the nineteenth century.

The Growth of Towns

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, European towns grew rapidly in number and size, reflecting economic development and increased security.
Fortified stone ramparts, gates, and towers gave towns distinctive visible characteristics.
Towns were home to most courts (including municipal courts), hospitals, religious confraternities, and guilds.
Town halls and churches were central to the structure of medieval towns.
Towns housed a significant number of clergy, some ministering to the population and others living cloistered lives in convents and monasteries.
Most major towns in Europe were established before 1300, with Poland creating about 200 new towns between 1450 and 1550, adding to the 450 already in existence.
Northern Italy and the Low Countries had the densest networks of towns, though town dwellers were a small minority, about 15 percent of the population.
By 1500, only about 6 percent of Europeans lived in towns with populations over 10,000.
In the German states, only 200 of 3,000 towns had more than 10,000 residents.
Constantinople, Naples, Milan, Paris, and Venice were the only European cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.
In Italy, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Milan, and Pisa became independent city-states around 1100, controlling smaller surrounding towns and villages.
The decline of the Byzantine Empire and the inability of the Holy Roman Empire to assert control over Italy prevented the rise of large territorial states on the Italian peninsula.
The prosperity and independence of Italian city-states contributed to the flourishing of the Renaissance.
Venetian and Genoese merchants sent trading fleets along spice routes to Central Asia, India, and China, expanding trade networks.
In northern Europe, the growth of cities and towns was also tied to long-distance trade.
Northern German trading towns like Lübeck and Hamburg prospered from the Baltic grain trade and formed the Hanseatic League, initially to defend against banditry.
The Hanseatic League established a trade network stretching from London to Novgorod in Russia.
The Polish Baltic port of Gdańsk had its own currency, fleet, army, and diplomats, functioning as an independent entity.
Towns in southern Germany formed leagues to resist territorial lords and protect trade routes.
Trade fairs in towns like Champagne in northern France, as well as Lyon and Beaucaire in southern France, connected northern European merchants with those from the Mediterranean.
The market function of trading towns swelled their populations, and landowners from regions of commercialized agriculture sold their produce in town markets.
Medieval Europe had major urban centers of learning, with Paris known for theology, Montpellier for medicine, and Bologna for Roman law.
Oxford and Cambridge Universities were founded in the thirteenth century.
By 1500, dozens of towns had universities, which were organized bodies of students or masters.
Literacy, though limited to a small portion of the population, grew faster in towns than in the countryside, with secondary education shifting from rural monasteries to town church or grammar schools.
Town governments were dominated by oligarchies of wealthy merchants, guild masters, and property owners, with nobles included in the oligarchies of Italian towns.
Despite many peasants living in towns and working fields outside the town walls during the day, town and country were seen as distinctly separate worlds.

Municipal Liberties

In feudal Europe, towns were seen as zones of freedom, where residents were not bound by service obligations to lords.
The saying “town air makes [one] free” reflected the belief that no town person in Western Europe could be a serf.
Urban freedoms were typically obtained through charters purchased from lords, exempting towns from taxes in exchange for payments.
Urban oligarchs fiercely guarded municipal independence against nobles and rulers seeking revenue and political consolidation.
In some cases, rulers allied with towns against nobles, especially when towns could provide loans to kings waging wars against vassals or other rulers, including popes.
Towns gained the most freedom in regions where territorial rulers were weak, such as Italy and the German states.
Areas with strong rulers and noble control saw slower urban development.
The traditions of municipal liberties in Western Europe influenced the development of constitutional forms of government.
While rural social relationships were defined by personal obligations, towns emphasized collective rights through guilds and associations.
In regions like England, northern France, the Netherlands, Flanders, and Switzerland, urban confraternities fought to maintain independence from rulers and rural nobles.
Eastern European towns lacked the associational infrastructure of Western Europe and were unable to resist the growing power of nobles.
In Russia, as the Muscovite state expanded, tsars undermined urban autonomy, viewing towns as their personal property.
Russian lords demanded service and allegiance from townspeople, unlike the special charters of rights that Western towns enjoyed.

The Emergence of Sovereign States

By 1500, monarchical kingdoms began to exhibit some characteristics of modern states, though the term “state” was not yet in use.
During the late fifteenth century, France, Spain, and England evolved into “new monarchies” with increasing reach, a process that began in the late medieval era.
While monarchies grew stronger in Western Europe, they weakened in Eastern and East Central Europe due to power struggles, civil wars, and the dominance of lords.
Sovereign states emerged in Western Europe during the medieval period as rulers gained greater authority and independence, although they were not “nation-states” in the modern sense.
Medieval rulers governed a patchwork of territories, semi-independent towns, feudal vassals, and corporate institutions such as guilds, which often retained privileges in exchange for loyalty.
From the tenth to fifteenth centuries, France, England, and Spain consolidated their territories, establishing primacy over rivals and increasing royal authority.
Monarchs made laws, imposed administrative unity, raised armies, minted money, imposed taxes, summoned advisers, and appointed officials, which extended royal influence to more subjects.
In France, kings gradually gained power, especially after the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), which allowed them to expel the English and end the de facto independence of several provinces.
In 1482, France absorbed Burgundy, and in the 1490s, Brittany was annexed, strengthening the French monarchy through marriages and warfare.
England strengthened its monarchical state but differed from its continental counterparts by establishing traditions of consultation with leading subjects.
King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, which limited royal power by requiring the king to seek permission from a council for major taxes.
The tradition of a “parley” or “parliament” emerged under King Edward I, and by Edward III’s reign, Parliament had developed into two houses: the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
Parliament’s role grew as kings required approval for taxes, particularly during the Hundred Years’ War with France.
The Holy Roman Empire, despite its size, was not a sovereign state, as its emperor was elected and lacked the authority to consolidate power across its 300 semi-autonomous states.
The Habsburg dynasty, beginning in 1438, monopolized the title of Holy Roman Emperor, though smaller states like Switzerland resisted its power.
The increasing number of royal officials, including chanceries, treasuries, and courts, signaled early stages of bureaucratization in states, with some humble individuals rising to positions of influence.
Rulers drew revenue from their lands, taxation, the sale of offices, government bonds, and confiscated lands from rebellious nobles.
Taxes on goods like salt and wine became common, and states emerged as major collectors and distributors of revenue.
Public debt grew as monarchs borrowed from merchant-bankers, enriching these financiers and further consolidating monarchical authority.
As monarchies grew stronger, nobles increasingly relied on the crown for their power and status, serving in royal courts and buying royal offices, particularly in France and Spain.
Royal courts began to adjudicate property disputes, eroding noble jurisdiction, although in some regions, such as France and the German states, nobles retained some judicial rights over peasants.
The fifteenth century saw the emergence of regular diplomatic channels between European states, with Italian city-states like Florence, Milan, Venice, and Naples exchanging permanent ambassadors to represent their interests.

Limits to State Authority

Significant constraints still limited the authority of rulers, despite growing monarchical power.
Towns, through the purchase of royal charters, secured financial immunity, tempering royal authority.
Certain regions, like Navarre in Spain, maintained autonomy through representative institutions, despite being nominally part of larger realms.
Distance and physical impediments such as mountains and vast plains hindered the effective extension of royal authority.
Assemblies of notable subjects had long-standing rights, including the right to be consulted, as demonstrated in England.
In the thirteenth century, rulers convened assemblies to explain their policies, ask for military assistance, and hear grievances.
From these assemblies, parliaments, diets, and Estates emerged, representing nobles, clergy, towns, and in some cases, commoners.
By the early sixteenth century, powerful states like France, Habsburg Austria, and Spain could raise sizable armies but faced the challenge of financing increasingly expensive wars.
States borrowed from wealthy banking families, utilized subsidies from friendly powers, imposed special taxes and forced loans, and sold offices to finance wars.
Sixteenth-century inflation further increased the cost of warfare, making financial management more difficult for rulers.
Royal levies to finance warfare through direct taxation required the consent of those taxed, with peasants having limited rights in this process.
The dialogue between rulers and assemblies, particularly regarding taxation, shaped the emergence and nature of modern government in Europe.
In German states, princes needed noble assemblies’ consent to collect excise taxes, while noble assemblies in Poland-Lithuania and Hungary held more power than royal authority.
In Bohemia, towns’ rights partially balanced noble prerogatives, yet rulers needed to seek assembly support or compliance, especially in times of war.
Nobles and churchmen resisted royal taxes, which often disproportionately affected the poor, who had no representation.
Nobles needed to be convinced or coerced into providing armies for the monarch.
Kings acted as supreme judges, but not for clergy, who were typically tried in Church courts.
The struggle between rulers and popes dated back to the late eleventh century, with conflicts like the “lay investiture crisis” (1060-1122) over the appointment of bishops.
The clergy generally promoted obedience to both secular and ecclesiastical rulers.
Kings further consolidated power when popes granted monarchs in France, Spain, and some German towns rights over the clergy, including the right to name bishops.

Transforming Discoveries

In the late Middle Ages, significant developments in warfare and exploration transformed Europe and its global relationships.
The invention of printing created a culture of books, enhancing the spread of knowledge, ideas, and debate.
Exploration during this period led to the development of trade networks across the oceans.
European exploration resulted in conquests and the establishment of empires

Gunpowder, Warfare, and Armies

Warfare became more pervasive in the early modern period due to dynastic quarrels between rulers seeking to consolidate or expand territories.
Kings still relied on nobles to raise armies and command in battle, but the face of battle was revolutionized in the late medieval period.
Gunpowder, invented in China and brought to Europe in the thirteenth century by Arabs, transformed warfare.
Gunpowder shifted warfare from local skirmishes between lords and vassals to larger, more destructive battles between dynastic rivals.
First used in European battle in the early fourteenth century, gunpowder was initially used to propel arrows and, later, lead bullets.
Gunpowder became the explosive for early rifles or muskets, which could be standardized in caliber and ammunition.
The development of spring-driven wheel locks for rifles allowed for more reliable firing mechanisms.
Rifles gradually replaced traditional weapons like the lance, sword, crossbow, and longbow, reducing the role of nobles as privileged warriors.
Heavily armored knights became vulnerable to gunfire, diminishing the importance of cavalry in battles.
Cavalrymen adapted by wearing lighter armor and often carried pistols alongside traditional lances.
Pikemen, armed with 13-foot-long pikes, remained essential in armies, protecting infantry as they reloaded rifles.
Pikemen could break through rows of riflemen during attacks.
Exploding artillery shells became capable of wounding or killing multiple combatants at once.
At the Battle of Novara (1513), Swiss soldiers defeated a French army, with artillery fire killing 700 men in three minutes.
Deadly artillery bombardments devastated enemy morale during battles.
Naval battles grew more intense as cannons replaced rams on warships.
Sleek Mediterranean galleys were replaced by larger ships capable of transporting heavy cannon.
The threat of enemy artillery led to the construction of massive fortifications around towns, giving defenders an advantage.
Sieges became longer, with victorious armies sometimes slaughtering surviving civilians in frustration.
Frontier garrisons, artillery units, and royal household guards were among the few true standing armies, but their size increased during late fifteenth and sixteenth-century wars.
During the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), major battles featured 7,000 to 15,000 soldiers on each side.
Armies grew to 25,000 during the conflicts between the Austrian Habsburgs and French Valois dynasties in Italy.
Some nobles still maintained private armies but served their kings as commanders and cavalrymen.
Mercenaries, also known as “free lances,” increasingly replaced feudal levies and urban militias in armies.
Mercenaries came from various regions, including Albania, England, Scotland, Greece, Poland, and Switzerland, and expected pay, rations, and opportunities for pillage.
Despite irregular pay, mercenaries deserted less frequently than soldiers recruited by states from their own populations.
Most states implemented some form of conscription, whether a formal draft or a hasty roundup when war was imminent.
Loyal nobles, royal officials, and paid recruiters provided soldiers, with peasants making up over three-quarters of armies.
Criminals often joined armies as a condition for release from prison or execution, sometimes marked with a branded letter as part of their sentence.
Military conditions were harsh, with inadequate lodging and food, and infractions punished severely, such as “running the gauntlet.”
Officers dispensed justice without trial or appeal, and punishments, including impaling deserters’ heads on pikes, were carried out immediately.
Uniforms were rare, except for royal guards and specialized forces, though soldiers often wore armbands or tunics with national or regional symbols for identification.
Epidemics like dysentery and typhoid killed more soldiers than battle wounds.
Inadequate medical treatment and neglect resulted in many wounded soldiers dying from their injuries.

The Printing Press and the Power of the Printed Word

The advent of printing in fifteenth-century Europe marked the end of the medieval period in some ways.
Woodblock printing and paper were invented in China in the eighth century and reached Europe via the Arab world through Spain in the thirteenth century.
Before printing, monks and scribes manually copied books onto parchment, which was expensive and time-consuming.
A single copy of the Bible required approximately 170 calfskins or 300 sheepskins.
Paper, much cheaper than parchment, made it easier for scholars, officials, and merchants to access materials, but copying remained slow.
Cosimo de’ Medici hired 200 scribes to copy 200 volumes in two years, reflecting the laborious nature of book production.
In the fifteenth century, Flemish craftsmen invented oil-based ink, and combined with a wooden hand press, these innovations led to the invention of movable metal type in Mainz, Germany, around 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg.
Gutenberg’s Latin Bibles became renowned for their beauty.
Printing shops soon appeared in the Italian states, Bohemia, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and England by the 1470s.
By 1500, around 35,000 books were published annually in Europe, and by 1600, this number had risen to between 150,000 and 200,000 books.
Books provided scholars with identical texts, facilitating discussions and critiques of ancient and medieval works.
Accounts of discoveries in the New World spread across Europe through printed materials from Spain, England, and France.
Private collections of books grew rapidly, and new professions related to books emerged, including librarians, booksellers, publishers, typesetters, and editors.
The dissemination of knowledge led to an increase in the number of universities, rising from 20 in 1300 to around 70 in 1500.
Literacy rates increased, though literate individuals remained a minority.
In Florence and other prosperous cities, literacy rates may have been relatively high, but in the Italian city-states overall, only about 1% of workers and peasants could read and write.
In the German states in 1500, literacy was estimated at around 3 to 4%.
Among the upper classes, many people developed a habit of reading.
Not all published works were welcomed by secular and ecclesiastical leaders, and printing made censorship more difficult.
The destruction of manuscripts could no longer eliminate an idea, as printed works were widely distributed.
Pope Alexander VI issued a bull in 1501 warning of the dangers of unregulated printing, acknowledging its usefulness for spreading beneficial knowledge but stressing the need for control over harmful works.

Exploration and Conquest in the New World: The Origins of European Empire

By the last decade of the fifteenth century, the Iberian Peninsula had a long history of navigational and sailing accomplishments.
The Portuguese, with the advantage of Lisbon’s port, captured a foothold on the Moroccan coast in 1415, beginning two centuries of expansion.
Early in the fifteenth century, the Portuguese explored the west coast of Africa and captured Madeira and the Azores in the Atlantic.
Their goal was to break Muslim and Venetian control of European access to Asian spices and silk.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain initially rejected Christopher Columbus’ request for financial backing for a voyage to the Indies.
In 1492, fearing that Portuguese vessels might reach Asia first, Ferdinand and Isabella supported Columbus’ expedition.
Columbus set sail in late 1492 with three ships, believing he could reach the Orient by sailing west across the Atlantic.
After nine weeks, Columbus’ fleet reached the Caribbean island of San Salvador, not Asia.
He then explored Cuba and Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti), believing he was near India.
Columbus suggested to the Spanish crown that Hispaniola could be made profitable by selling its people as slaves, marking a tragic turn.
His greatest contribution was finding a way across the Atlantic using the trade winds.
Columbus made three more voyages of discovery, the last in 1502, after which he abandoned his search for a passage to Asia.
Portugal, poorer than Spain, struggled to defend its trade routes from Spanish encroachment.
In 1487, Bartholomew Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, reaching the Indian Ocean.
Vasco da Gama’s expedition to India in 1498 returned with a cargo of spices that paid for the expedition sixty times over.
The Portuguese established fortified bases along the Indian Ocean, including Goa.
The maritime route across the Indian Ocean now competed with the overland spice and silk routes.
The Portuguese found an existing maritime trade network in the Indian Ocean linking China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa.
An Indonesian ruler criticized the Portuguese, stating they journeyed far from home to acquire possessions out of greed.
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI divided the non-Christian world into zones for Spanish and Portuguese exploration and exploitation.
The pope awarded Portugal all of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, while Spain received most of the Americas.
Portugal claimed Brazil, which became the largest colony in the Americas, established in the second half of the sixteenth century.
Spanish explorers continued reaching the Americas, with Vasco Nunez de Balboa establishing Spanish control over Panama.
Cuba fell to the Spanish and became a staging point for Hernando Cortes’ conquest of Mexico.
Cortes, landing in Mexico in 1519, met Aztec ruler Montezuma, who sent him away but later sent gifts of gold and silver.
Cortes, despite orders to limit his expedition to exploration and trade, was determined to conquer Mexico for Emperor Charles V.
With alliances from non-Aztec peoples and only sixteen horses and six hundred soldiers, Cortes conquered Mexico.
Francisco Pizarro led the conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, where the Incas had never seen iron or steel weapons before.
When Pizarro’s horses lost their shoes in Peru, he replaced them with silver due to a lack of iron.
Silver discoveries in Mexico and the Andes in the 1540s transformed the economy of Spanish conquest.
The imported silver integrated the Spanish Empire more deeply into expanding European trade.
The victory of the conquistadors was a result of steel-bladed swords triumphing over stone-bladed swords.
The surprise element of cannon fire also contributed to Spanish victories in the Americas and Portuguese victories in Southeast Asia.
A witness to a Portuguese attack in 1511 described cannon fire as sounding like thunder and matchlocks like ground-nuts popping in a frying pan.
The conquistadors, influenced by tales of crusading chivalry and conquest, sought adventure and wealth.
Hernando Cortes came from a modest Castilian noble family, with his father a veteran of the Reconquista, which expelled the Moors from Spain.
Spanish conquerors often expressed dual motives: serving God and the king, but also seeking riches.
Many conquistadors died young, far from home, with their dreams of wealth dashed by the harsh realities of the New World.
Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese-born explorer, was killed by islanders in the Pacific, though his crew completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.
Many of the early settlers in the New World, attracted by tales of gold and silver, also perished; up to two-thirds of Europeans in Hispaniola died during the first decade of settlement.
Indigenous populations suffered even more; diseases such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and bubonic plague, brought by Europeans, devastated native peoples.
The population of Mexico dropped from about 25 million in 1520 to around 1 million by 1600.
Peru’s indigenous population fell from 7 million in 1500 to half a million in 1600.
A Mayan chronicler in Guatemala recorded the devastation caused by European diseases, describing the widespread death and its horrific aftermath.
In return, the Europeans contracted syphilis from the Native Americans, which then spread throughout Europe.
The exchange of diseases between the Old and New Worlds had tragic consequences, but there were also beneficial exchanges.
Before European arrival, the Americas had no domesticated animals larger than llamas and alpacas, and the Indian diet lacked significant animal protein.
Spaniards introduced horses, cattle, and sheep to the Americas; the sheep population in Cuba grew from 350 to over 30,000 in just a few years.
While animals provided manure for farming, they also disrupted the ecological balance by eating through forest land and damaging indigenous agriculture.
Spanish galleons brought back crops like tobacco, potatoes, beans, cacao, chili peppers, and tomatoes, contributing to Europe’s population growth.
Maize fed European farm animals, while Spaniards planted wheat, barley, rice, and oats in their colonies.
In 1565, a Spanish galleon completed a global trade voyage, sailing from Manila to Mexico, bringing cinnamon and other goods.
Spanish ships returned with silver, used to purchase silks, porcelain, spices, and other luxury items from Chinese junks in the Philippines.
Trade routes connected Seville to the Caribbean, Veracruz in Mexico, and Cartagena in Colombia, with silver from the Americas replenishing European treasuries.
All five continents—Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America—became interconnected in a global trade network, marking the beginnings of globalization.
The Spanish sought both trade and empire in the Americas, claiming territories and dividing them among conquerors as booty.
Spanish legal documents allowed Indians to retain their existing lands, while all other territories were claimed by the Spanish crown.
The Spanish requerimiento demanded that indigenous peoples accept Spanish rule and convert to Christianity.
Conquistadors built new towns with a plaza in the center, surrounded by the church, town hall, and prison, as part of a rectangular grid plan.
In exchange for the pope’s blessing of colonial ventures, missionaries arrived in the Americas with hopes of converting indigenous peoples to Christianity.
The harsh reality for natives was often untempered by the missionaries’ good intentions, with some priests advocating harsh measures.
A Portuguese priest in Brazil in 1563 suggested using violence as a method of preaching, and a Spanish judge in Mexico described the cruel treatment inflicted on Indians.
Europeans, including Spaniards and Portuguese, sought to impose their culture on the conquered peoples, but Christian teachings made limited progress in India and virtually none in China.
The Church did not view Indians as infidels, but rather as innocents who could be converted. Dominican priests in Santo Domingo and papal pronouncements depicted Indians as capable of understanding and desiring the Catholic faith.
The Spanish had experience with diverse languages and cultures on the Iberian Peninsula, but encountered unprecedented diversity in the Americas.
In the 1590s, a Franciscan friar claimed to have built over 200 churches and baptized more than 70,000 Indians. Christian beliefs in Latin America often merged with local religious practices.
The encomienda system initially established a relationship of obligatory labor service, where Spanish settlers could demand tribute or labor from Indians without owning their lands.
The encomienda system was eventually replaced by a wage system and repartimiento, which allowed officials to force Indians to work for specific periods.
In Central America, Spanish colonists used the concept of a “just war” against “heathens” to justify enslavement.
The Church and the crown periodically attempted to protect Indians from harsh treatment by many Spanish colonists, with Bishop Bartolome de Las Casas advocating for better treatment and the protection of indigenous customs.
As the native population dwindled due to disease, overwork, and brutality, the Spanish sought new sources of labor, turning to African slaves.
By the fifteenth century, Portuguese traders had started profiting from selling Africans, and Portugal dominated the African slave trade network.
The Spaniards believed Africans were more suited to the harsh conditions of the Americas. Between 1595 and 1640, about 300,000 African slaves were transported to Spanish colonies, with many more arriving in the following century.
Spanish settlers in the Americas included various tradespeople, with a significant number of Spaniards emigrating to the New World; by the mid-sixteenth century, around 150,000 Spaniards had moved, increasing to 240,000 by the end of the century.
In 1552, a Spanish official praised the discovery of the Indies as one of the greatest events since the creation of the world, aside from Christ’s incarnation and death.
French writer Michel de Montaigne, in 1588, offered a critical view, condemning the destruction and suffering caused by the conquest of the Americas for economic gain, describing the devastation of cities and peoples.

Conclusion

The economic and political structures of early modern Europe were built on the dynamism of the medieval period.
Demographic recovery eventually overcame the losses caused by the Black Death.
Commerce and manufacturing expanded within Europe.
Mediterranean traders extended their reach to the Middle East and Asia.
Despite many small states in Central Europe and the Italian peninsula, rulers in France, England, and Spain consolidated authority, leading to the emergence of sovereign monarchical states.
Three major movements marked the end of the Middle Ages:
- Renaissance: A cultural rebirth that began in the mid-fourteenth century in Italian city-states like Florence and Venice, leading to significant achievements in literature and painting.
- Exploration and Colonization: The exploration and colonization of the New World diminished the Mediterranean Sea’s role as Europe’s economic center and contributed to Spain, England, and the Netherlands becoming world powers. Over 1.5 million Europeans migrated to the New World between 1500 and the late eighteenth century.
- Reformation: Beginning in the 1520s, this movement challenged the unity and dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe.