8. Name some wares, important in the stock of even the smallest country store, which did not appear in commerce in the period of the manor. Show the necessity of each one of the wares mentioned in the text.
9. Why could a profitable commerce in slaves be carried on when other wares did not pay the merchant?
10. What are the luxuries which a trader now can afford to pack into the uncivilized districts of Africa and America?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
References on the rise and character of feudalism may be found in many manuals of European history; among others Emerton, Introduction, 236; Mediæval Europe, 477; Robinson, Middle Ages, 119. Brief accounts, mainly for the student of political history, may be found in the above, in Adams, European Hist., 185-191; and in the same author’s *Civilization, chap. 9. The best account of the feudal system in English is Seignobos, **Feudal regime, N. Y., Holt, 1903.
Most of the books describing conditions in this period treat them either from the political or the agrarian standpoint; the writer knows nothing, suitable for student’s reading, discussing the origins of commerce at this time. See, therefore, Cunningham, Growth, vol. 1, book 1, or the smaller manuals on English economic history.
CHAPTER VI
TOWN TRADE
43. Significance of towns in the economic organization; decline of the Roman towns.—In the latter part of the Middle Ages, beginning after the year 1000, a striking change took place in the life of Europe; the people advanced so rapidly in their economic and political organization that we can make this a new era in their history. It will be necessary to notice the important changes in detail, but we can summarize them now, from the economic standpoint, by saying that people advanced from the stage of the village or manor to that of the town. A town, as the word will be used here, means a group of at least several hundred, perhaps several thousand people, settled closely together, and maintaining themselves in large part by manufactures and trade. Such towns had existed, as noted above, in the Roman Empire of the West. In Roman Gaul (modern France) there were over one hundred of them. They depended for their existence, however, on the stimulus of Roman culture, and on the security which good government could afford to their trade. A manufacturing class evidently could not eat the wares it made, and needed the chance to exchange them for food products from the country districts if it was to maintain itself. In the period before, during, and after the German invasions the chance for exchange grew steadily less, as we have seen. Some of the towns were entirely destroyed in the period of disorder which followed the fall of the Roman government. London, for instance, which had been a flourishing town under Roman rule, must have become a mere heap of rubbish, for when it was rebuilt in later times no attempt was made to follow the lines of the old streets, and new streets were laid out over the ruins of former houses. When a town was not actually destroyed it ceased to live; the inhabitants had to take to agriculture to support themselves, and the town shrank to a mere village, which could not be distinguished from the manors about it. Of more than 500 modern French cities scarcely 80 can be traced back to the Roman period, and all of these lost their identity as towns and became simple villages in the intervening time.
44. Rise of towns after 1000; conditions determining their location.—We read of towns in Europe before the year 1000 but they scarcely deserve the name; they were rather the germs from which towns were later to spring. Considerable numbers of people would collect in the place where some great feudal lord spent most of his time, or where a monastery had been founded; garrisons would be established at places suitable for military operations. We must regard such groups, however, as supported by taxation rather than by the trade of individuals, from which most urban groups arise. Trade of this kind became, however, so considerable after the year 1000 that real towns grew up in constantly increasing numbers. Their position was determined by two important conditions of existence, political protection and the chance for profitable trade. People found the former by nestling under the walls of some castle or monastery; the many French towns which bear the name of some saint show how much the protection of the church was prized. The latter object was generally attained by founding the town at some break in a line of transportation, where goods had to be transshipped and where merchants would naturally congregate to rest and exchange their wares (cf. Ox-ford, Cam-bridge, etc.). We find the most considerable towns, therefore, along the seacoast and rivers, and at breaks or intersections of the land routes.
45. Development of manufacturing in the towns.—The rise of the towns brought with it, as has been suggested, a new era in manufactures. In the ordinary village it did not pay men to specialize in the production of wares, as the market was so small. A shoemaker, for instance, could not make a living by selling 50 or 100 pairs of shoes a year. If we think, however, of a village growing into a town surrounded by a considerable country population, we see that the market has widened into an area of size sufficient to support a number of specialists. Manufacturing became a profession to which men devoted most of their time. A man could learn his trade much more thoroughly, and could afford to make the tools which would enable him to exercise it most efficiently. The result was an increase in production which enabled the people on a given area to live far more comfortably than they had done before.