Lesson 14: Economic and Social Development in Western Europe

New ways of production and business

After the 11th century, some new changes took place in the European countryside. Settlement movements were carried out in various places, and a large amount of woodlands, wastelands, and swamps were developed and the land area gradually expanded. Some of the settlements were organized by lords, while most of them were reclaimed by peasants on their own initiative. The settlers became the new owners of these areas, and they cultivated them in their own way.

These areas also followed the example of autonomous cities and became areas with independent judicial and administrative autonomy.

With the regulation of customary and manorial law, in more and more areas of Western Europe, servitude was fixed to a specific extent. Serfs were able to purchase exemptions from servitude for the lord with money, thus gaining free access to their own labor, and the opportunity to leave the manor and escape the personal bondage of the lord by paying a migration tax. The estates gradually declined and collapsed. In the process, the peasants gradually gained control over their own surplus products.

The small plots of land under the manor system became increasingly unsuited to the new production and business activities, and some lords were not good at management, so in some countries and regions, land concentration became a trend. After the middle of the 14th century, the leasing of lords' straight camps reached a climax, and the lords thus lived on land rents and no longer participated in production management. Some wealthy farmers pooled their land and established tenant farms by renting or buying the lord's land, or by subletting or buying other tenant farmers' properties. They adopted new production methods for their operations, hired farmers with little or no land to farm, and marketed their products.

The surplus of agricultural products, combined with increased urban demand, allowed agricultural and livestock products to enter the market and to become the main commodity for long-distance trade. Farmers became more and more directly connected to markets. Some merchants would buy products sold by individual farmers in rural markets and ship them to ports or further afield. Grain from the Languedoc in southern France was shipped to cities in Italy; European tweed, furs, etc. were also exported to the East.

During this period, handicrafts were also developing. On the one hand, craftsmen were gradually moving away from agriculture, and on the other hand, they were no longer producing just for themselves, but working more to adapt to the market. In the 13th century, the division of labor was refined and small-scale handicraft workshops were developed. In order to pay feudal taxes, peasants worked at home with their own production tools for merchants. Decentralized handicraft workshops emerged in the countryside. Later, these decentralized workshops gradually shifted to centralized workshops.

The merchants not only provided the hired workers with raw materials, but also with uniform production tools, and the workers became hired laborers who completely sold their labor and formed a complete employment relationship with their employers. Because the production tools are uniformly equipped, and therefore often need to concentrate labor in a common place, so the formation of a centralized manual workshops. They started as a minority, but they embodied the capitalist relations of production. The division of labor and cooperation among hired workers further increased labor productivity.

The changes in land relations and the development of handicrafts promoted the gradual capitalist organization of agricultural and handicraft production, which began to change the overall face of medieval European society.

Wealthy peasants and the citizen class

In the 13th and 14th centuries, the social structure of the countryside changed. Most of the nobles did not pay attention to or could not afford to run their own estates and mortgaged or sold them to pay off debts or meet expenses; the rich peasants, knights and gentry continued to concentrate their land by various means and gradually built up their own new estates, controlling production, exchange and other aspects with new business methods, and also controlling village administration. They were also the earliest initiators of modern agriculture.

In the cities, craftsmen and merchants became city dwellers, enjoying the rights granted by the new contractual relations and acquiring a special legal status, protected by royal and ecclesiastical charters and city laws. The wealthy merchants and magnates invested a great deal of their commercial profits in the countryside, buying property and adopting new methods of production and management. They also imitated the lifestyle of the great nobility by marrying them or becoming officials, raising their status and expanding their political power, which became the political force needed to strengthen the king's power. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the citizens of England and France, as a third class, attended the meetings called by the king and constantly put forward their political ideas.