The Latin West 1200-1500

AP World History

Ch 16.2

Part 2 Urban Revival

• 900 CE no town or city in Europe could compare to the cities in the Byzantine Empire

• By the 1500’s cities in western Europe and around the Mediterranean rapidly experienced commercial, cultural and administrative changes

Causes of Urban Revival

• The increased growth of trade and manufacturing after 1200

• Lead to the growth of Urban areas in the Latin West

Major Cities

• Developed due to trade or manufacturing

• Trade allowed cities in northern Italy to prosper.

• Venice was the dominant city for trade in the Far East

Flanders

• Region in northern Europe what is now Belgium

• Main city Bruges • became a large,

major textile manufacturing and trading area.

Technology

• Late 1200’s, the spinning wheel arrives in England.

• Transforms the economy from wool export to textile exports by the mid 1400’s.

• Competition promoted the spread of manufacturing and encouraged the development of new specialty goods.

Flanders trade ship route

Characteristics of trading cities in the Middle Ages

• Offered people more social freedom than rural places

• “Chartered Cities” where residents could claim freedom from serfdom after one year.

• Quickly able to adapt to changing market conditions (diversified)

• Home to most of Europe’s Jews

Metal Working• Grew because of:• Watermills• Improved mining

techniques from central Europe

• Blast furnaces• New sources of metals• Blast furnaces powered by

machine driven bellows provided the high temperatures needed to produce high-quality iron by the late 1300’s.

• Water also powered stamping mills that broke up iron and trip hammers that pounded it into shape.

Industry and Environmental Change

• Rapid growth of industry caused:

• Deforestation

• Water pollution by industries like tanneries

• Damming of rivers

• The creation of quarry pits and mines

Deforestation occurs due to farming, building, fuel production and making of charcoal for glass and iron industry.

Interesting facts

• Building boom France during 1200 - 1400’s causes more stone to be quarried than during the age of the Egyptians.

• The first pollution laws were passed by English Parliament in 1388.

Civic Life

Hanseatic League

• Based in Germany• An association of

trading cities in northern Europe is created.

• Promoted increased trade through Russia in the East and England to the West.

Guilds

• An association of craft specialists in the same trade.

• Dominate manufacturing in cities and become powerful political and economic institutions.

• Example Silversmiths, woodworkers, leatherworkers.

• They will become “Trade Unions” in later centuries.

Guilds

• Set prices for goods.• Trained apprentices and promoted

business interests in politics.• Denied membership to outsiders and

Jews.• Perpetuated male dominance of the most

skilled jobs

Nepotism

• The practice of hiring and promoting family members ahead of others in a business.

• kept families of guild members as most powerful leaders of industry.

International Fairs

• Regional markets that met once or twice a year.

• “Champagne Fairs” in French wine regions.

• Manufactured goods, livestock and farm produce were bought and sold.

• The king of France guaranteed safe passage for all traders going to these markets after 1100.

• Goods from known world were exchanged.

• Also important for currency exchange.

Merchant Banks

• Most significant growth industry of 1400’s.

• European Financial Institution that engages in Investment Banking, Counseling, Advising and in Mergers and Acquisitions.

• Created very wealthy merchant-banker class.

Merchant Bank Families

• Medici Family• Most powerful

banking family in Italy

• Patrons (supporters) of the arts

• Florence was home• The Galileo Project |

Galileo | Patrons | Medici Family

Merchant Bank Families

• The Fuggers of Augsburg

• German family had 10 times wealth of Medici

• Jacob Fugger Portraits

Merchant Banks

• Services included:

1.Checking accounts

2.Shareholding companies

3.Money changing

4.Loans

5.Making investments

Locate - Florence Home of the Locate - Florence Home of the MediciMedici

What Trade Organization were the What Trade Organization were the Fuggers Close to?Fuggers Close to?

European Jews• Cities were home for most of

Europe’s Jews.• Jews were targets of

persecution, blamed for the spread of the plague.

• Before they were expelled in 1492, Spain held the largest population of Jews in Europe.

• 1492 Spanish kings expel all Jews and nobles confiscate their wealth and properties in the name of religious purity.

European Jews

• The Catholic Church played no official role in the persecution of Jews

• The church was officially the protector of Jews.

• three pages from a book of historical maps, drawn by Riza ibn Muklebi in 1686.

• show the migration of Jews expulsed from Spain to Istanbul in 1492. Text in Arabic and Ladino.

Spanish expulsion of Jews 1492Spanish expulsion of Jews 1492

• Locate• London• Flanders• Venice• Champagne

Region• Hanseatic

League Territory

• Florence• Spain• Augsburg

End Part 2