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
Medici
What Trade Organization were the
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 1492
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Locate
London
Flanders
Venice
Champagne
Region
Hanseatic
League
Territory
Florence
Spain
Augsburg
End Part 2