Economics of the Medieval Period 1. Fairs of Champagne. In the 11th and 12th ce

1. Fairs of Champagne. In the 11th and 12th centuries, these developed as major centers of long-distance trade and exchange. As cities concentrate trade in space, the fairs concentrated a more limited volume of trade in time, different fairs operating at different times of the year, maximizing the prospect that merchants would find customers offering goods in exchange. Fairs were also points at which Italian financial innovations spread into Northern Europe. The fairs declined as cities developed, and with the emergence of the sea route from the Mediterranean to northern Europe.

2. Three-field system of agriculture. This was the basis of medieval crop rotation, with fields alternating between crops that severely depleted soil nutrients, crops that produced less stress, and lying fallow for replenishment. The overall effect of the three-field system was to allow higher productivity - allowing a 50 percent increase of farmland under cultivation, from half to two-thirds - thus supporting a larger population, without exhausting the soil. The three-field system also used labor and capital (e.g., plow teams) more efficiently through the year. The three-field system became widespread in the north, but never so widely used in Italy.

3. Serfdom. This was a legal status in which peasants were bound to the soil, and required to provide labor service or in-kind dues to the lord of the land. Though a form of bondage, it differed from slavery in that the serf could not be

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gue that the state has two essential economic characteristics. On the one hand, by defining property rights, and using its local monopoly of force to enforce those rights, it makes a coherent economic life possible. In the absence of a state and its enforcement mechanisms, the result is not a libertarian paradise but anarchy, "nasty, brutish, and short." On the other hand, states tend to be inefficient in creating and enforcing property rights. In the early modern era the state, or its rulers, tended to regard themselves as the ultimate owners of their domains, subject to various practical political constraints - essentially, the twin threats of foreign conquest on the one hand, and internal rebellion on the other. Moreover, to the extent that they could realize this ideal, rulers, like the owners of any productive resource, might be torn between short-term maximization of return, by squeezing as much in taxes out of their subjects as possible for their own consumption, and long-term maximization, restraining their own consumption in favor of investment. This investment could be from taxes (Colbert's model in France), or by leaving resources in their subjects' hands to invest (since the resulting wealth would still be pot

Category: History - E