HIST-338 Lecture 12: European economy at the end of the fourteenth century
28 Nov 2020
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Document Summary
The state of the european economy at the end of the fourteenth century is difficult to gauge. Keeping up with all this trade required venice to construct the largest shipworks in the then- known world, the arsenal, which at its height employed nearly three thousand laborers. Other scholars have studied the rental incomes of baronial landholders in england found that they maintained a consistent standard of living, many even improved their standards, after surviving the initial shock waves of the black death. By around 1400, several sites in england had become centers of actual wool-cloth production; no longer was england kept in the economically servile status of producing the raw material that others refined and reaped the principal profits of. Capital and political power remained concentrated in the hands of a finite sector of society, that sector, since it now included merchants, manufacturers, and financiers, was considerably larger than just the aristocracy.
