The popular image of the Middle Ages in Europe that most of us have inherited is one filled with the dark corridors of monasteries or possibly of peasants dropping dead in their fields of the Black Death.
But the Middle Ages in Europe were not a period of inactivity between the vitality of the Roman Empire and the vitality of the Renaissance. Art and poetry was created, glorious buildings were erected, crops were planted and brought in, children born, books written and everywhere - as has always been the case throughout all of human history and across every continent - trade went on. People bartered and bought, making themselves small fortunes and losing them, just staying ahead of the bailiffs or having a good year, always looking for a partner with whom to trade or sell something of lesser need for something of greater. This paper looks at the state of trade patterns and the role of merchants in Europe during the years between 1000 and 1400 a.d.
Before looking more particularly at the role of mercantile activities within Europe during this period, a brief overview of the history and culture of the times is needed to provide needed background. The Middle Ages is generally considered to be the period in Europe dating from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, around the 5th century, to the 15th century. However, the fixing of dates for the beginning and end of the Middle Ages is arbitrary; at neither time was there any sharp break in the cultural development of the continent. This paper, however, focuses on the later years of the Middle Ages, an era about which historians are generally in agreement (Cantor, 1994, p. 27).
The term ôMiddle Agesö has for centuries implied a suspension of time and, especially, a suspension of progress - a period of cultural stagnation, once referred to as the Dark Ages, between the glory of classical antiquity and the rebirth of that glory in the beginnings of the modern world. This vie...