Question

What do we know about trade and exchange as major activities leading to wealth and progress during the Medieval times in Europe during the years 1100-1500?

Please respond with a few facts in detail or a 3-4 sentenc paragraph.

Answer 1

The Church and secular government worked to protect trade and traders. Agricultural specialization was one important impetus to trade. Improved roads and vehicles of transportation provide for increasingly made it possible to reach far-flung urban markets. Cities were becoming larger and larger and they did not grow their own food. That food came from the countryside.

Increasingly through movements like the crusades and fairs, people were becoming familiar with exotic products from other parts of the world that they wished to have.The fairs were held over many months of the year, except in the winter. For example, the fairs in the Champagne region of France were particularly popular. Consequently, merchants from the south of Europe came north; merchants from the north of Europe came south.

Italian cities such as Venice, Bari, and Genoa had very important commercial networks in the Mediterranean. Venice, in particular, had a sophisticated commercial network in the eastern Mediterranean.The eastern Mediterranean world was linked by land routes that went right through Central Asia to China—the Silk Road. It was also linked to a vast set of seaborne trade routes in the Persian Gulf and in the Indian Ocean. Goods came by caravan or by ship from the Persian Gulf region and the Indian Ocean region, eventually linking together South Asia and the eastern coast of Africa with the eastern Mediterranean. Then through Italian merchants, the products of those parts of the world were brought back to Western Europe, via river or overland trade routes, to places like France and England. Thus we know that trade and exchange was a major activity leading to wealth and progress during the Medieval times in Europe during the years 1100-1500.