235. Europe transformed

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Growth of the Cities

A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War



Chapter III
The Growth of the Cities and its Consequences
1. The Growth of the Cities

p227 ...In Italy, as in Flanders, the maritime commerce, and the inland commerce which was its continuation, resulted in the activity of the seaports: Venice, Pisa, and Genoa in the South; Bruges in the North. Then, behind the seaports, the industrial cities developed: on the one hand, the Lombard communes and Florence; on the other, Ghent, Ypres, and Lille, Douai, and further inland, Valenciennes and Brussels. It was evidently the proximity of the seaports that gave such an extraordinary impetus to the industry of the cities -- an impetus unique in Europe. The Italian and Flemmish ports, with their hinterland, acquired an international importance, and in this way they were unique.

...The Italian merchants visited Flanders from the beginning of the 12th century. But presently the fairs of Champagne became the point of contact, and, so to speak, the Bourse of Italo-Flemish commerce... But these were merely business rendezvous, and no really important cities were founded on the sites of these fairs...

p228 The South of France was not far behind Italy. Marseilles, Montpellier, and Aigues-Mortes played their part in Mediterranean commerce. And behind them were Albi, Cahors, and Toulouse, which gravitated toward them, and prospered without interruption until the Albigensian War. In Spain the port of Barcelona likewise acquired great importance, though it did not produce any very active urban centres in the hinterland. 

Which was also true in Roman times, I believe. Was any of this different than the systems of commerce created by the Greeks, Carthage, and Rome BCE?

Avignon and Lyon develop on the Rhone. Paris is a separate, purely political creation.

Germany had no center of international trade. She was in touch with Italy through the Rhine and the Danube; on the one river Cologne and Strasbourg made their appearance; on the other, Ratisbon and Vienna. The most important of these centres was Cologne, where the Germany of the West and South came into contact with the Germany of the North, and both were in touch with the Low Countries. The Germany of the North... had Hamburg and Bremen on the North Sea, and above all, Lubeck, founded by Henry the Lion, on the Baltic. 

There's much more but I'm not interested in the history of Germany and areas east at the moment.

p229 ...a host of small secondary towns arose, of the same character as the large cities, and living under the same law. It had now become indispensable that each region should have its little urban center. [Why exactly?] The disorganization of the domainal system, and the appearance of free peasants, [from where?] necessarily called into existence -- to replace the "courts" from which the servile population had supplied their needs -- little bourgs, which offered an asylum to the artisans, and served as commercial centers for the great cities. [That part I get.] Their urban life was a spontaneous gift from the great cities. New towns were founded... A host of others led a quiet, semi-urban, semi-agricultural existence; Kreuzburg, where I am writing these lines, received its charter in 1213. These were towns of secondary formation, belonging to a period when the bourgeoisie had established itself, and when the princes, impelled by the advantages which they derived from these towns, were establishing them in all directions. Formerly the traveler passed from monastery to monastery; now he journeyed from town to town; there were towns on all the roads, at intervals of a few leagues, constituting a transition between the great cities, like the little beads of a rosary between the dizaines.

p230 The rise of the town provoked an increase of population, relatively comparable to that which occurred in the 19th century. And even more remarkable than the increase of the urban population were the effects of this multiplication of urban centers on the population of the countryside. Compared with the Carolingian population, we may estimate, roughly, that its strength was doubled. The maximum increase was attained at the beginning of the 14th century. From that time, until the 18th century, there was no essential change. [Huh?]

It would be of great importance to obtain some idea of the relative strength of the urban as compared with the rural population. But this is unfortunately impossible. ...we may be certain, that in all the centers favored by commerce the bourgeois population continued to increase until about the middle of the 14th century. Everywhere the walled enclosures... had to be enlarged, and faubourgs which had been built outside the gates had to be enclosed by walls... The largest cities -- Milan, Paris, Gand -- must have contained about 50,000 inhabitants, more or less. The cities of medium size would have contained from 20,000 to 50,000 inhabitants; the small towns from 2,00 to 5,000...

2. The Consequences for the Rural Population
p231 ...in the Middle Ages... the town was absolutely distinct from the open country. It was divided from it even materially, sheltering behind its moat and walls and its gates. Juridically, it was another world. Directly one entered the gates one became subject to a different law, just as one does to-day on passing from one State to another. Economically the contrast was as great. Not only was the city a centre of commerce and industry, but there was no commerce and no industry elsewhere. In the country they were everywhere prohibited. Every city endeavored to dominate the surrounding countryside, to subjugate it. The country had to provide it with a market, and, at the same time, to guarantee its supplies of foodstuffs. There was not, as there is to-day, constant exchange and interpenetration; there was a contrast, and the subordination of the one element to the other...

The rise of the towns... made it impossible to preserve the domainal system... Having no market in which to see its products, the domain restricted its production to the needs of its own consumption... Now, from the moment the towns made their appearance this special situation ceased to exist... For apart from its merchants and artisans, the urban population was a sterile population -- to employ a favorite formula of 18th century physiocrats. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiocracy] It could live only by sending out of the city for its means of subsistence -- that is, by purchasing them from the cultivators of the soil. It therefore provided them with the outlet for their products which they had hitherto lacked... And so the moral and the economic conditions to which the domainal organization corresponded both disappeared simultaneously. The peasant, whose activity was now solicited by the outer world, no longer regarded his work as a mere burden. Further, as a necessary consequence of the new state of affairs, the seigneur himself was even more conscious of the need of a reformation. For since the prestations of his tenants were fixed by custom, he soon discovered that his resources were dwindling unpleasantly. His revenues were still the same, while his expences were constantly increasing. The towns... by their purchases, were putting money into circulation throughout the countryside; and as money became more and more abundant its value diminished in proportion. The cost of living was continually rising, and the landowners, restricted to fixed revenues, found themselves launched on the road to ruin. For the petty military noblesse, who, as a general thing, possessed only small fiefs which just provided them with a living, the crisis was a veritable catastrophe. A large proportion of the chivalry, so numerous in the 11th century, was overwhelmed by poverty, at the close of the 12th century. 

YES. And what became of them? And this also explains why the landed interests were so eager to monetize some of their lands around the cities. This was the result of the same Invisible Hand that lead to the Enclosures and the Clearances in Britain.

It is difficult to say whether the increase of the population of the rural districts, which manifested itself at the very time when the conditions of rural life were undergoing such a profound modification, should also be referred to the appearance of the towns. After the devastations of the Normans, the Saracens, and the Hungarians, Europe had known a period of relative tranquility, during which the natural excess of births over deaths must insensibly have increased the numbers of the inhabitants. [Might there not also have been a climate explanation for this tranquility and rise in population?] But it is only in the second half of the 11th century that we perceive, in certain parts of Europe, the traces of a malaise due to excess in density of the population, and we are almost bound to believe that in affording the peasants new means of livelihood, the towns... had contributed... to increase their number. However it may be, it is certain that in the Low Countries, for example, the cultivated land, about 1050, was beginning to prove insufficient for the needs of the inhabitants. Moreover, events like the conquest of England in 1066, and the Crusade, evidently justify the supposition that the population was somewhat excessive, at all events in the North of France.

p234 ...From the beginning of the 11th century we have something more than presumption to go upon. The peopling of the regions beyond the Elbe by immigrants from the banks of the Rhine, Holland, and Flanders, evidently cannot be explained save by the superabundance of the rural population of the countries.

Thus, at the moment when the ancient domainal system had had its day, and no longer responded to the needs of a more economically advanced society, there were numbers of men who offered themselves to whomsoever would give them land. The great landowners, and above all the territorial princes, did not fail to profit by so favourable a situation. They possessed plenty of uncultivated land, for it seems that to the west of the Rhine and to the south of the Danube... the great domains had hardly spread beyond the fertile soil already cultivated in the days of the Roman Empire. The rest of the land was untouched forest, heath, and marshland. The time had come to bring this land into cultivation. This great task... was begun in the middle of the 11th century, reached its apogee during the course of the 12th century, and was completed, at a gradually relaxing pace, towards the end of the 13th century. From that period until the end of the 18th century the area of cultivated soil was not sensibly increased in the Occident, and this fact alone shows the importance of the progress effected by internal colonization in the Middle Ages. No doubt the intakes would have been less extensive had agriculture been more advanced... The crisis of the domainal organization could have been avoided had it been possible to increase the fertility of the soil by more rational methods. 

Jane Jacobs maintains that agricultural innovation is also the product of cities. The 18th or 19th century Gentry might have been able to lead agricultural innovation after they had been trained by the city economy (and science) but it would be asking too much of the nobility of the Middle Ages.

p235 In the newly peopled areas, ...The peasant's relations to the landowner were now merely such as arose from his quality of tenant. He paid a rent for the land which he occupied, but his person was free... The area of the "new town" was divided into a certain number of equal units, and these, on payment of quit-rent, could be secured under hereditary title. A charter... recognized the personal liberty of the inhabitants, and determined the powers and the competence of the mayor and the court who were charged with the affairs of the colony and the administration of justice, and defined the respective rights of the seigneur and the peasants as to forestal usage, etc. Thus a new type of village appeared, the village a loi. it no longer had anything in common with the old domainal organization, except for the fact that, like the latter, it presupposed a great property and a small-scale exploitation. For the rest, everything was new. Not only was the peasant a free man, but the pretestations which he had to pay the seigneur, instead of consisting of natural products, were usually payable in money... All over Europe there was a new growth of villages, and the very form of their names, ending in sart in the French-speaking countries, and in kerk, kirche, rode, rath in countries where German was spoken, still enable us to distinguish them from their neighbors in the long-settled regions. 

The Church played a considerable part in this great cultural task of the 12th century. She entrusted the work to the new orders of Cistercians and Premonstrants... the latter founded by St Bernard in 1113, [Footnote: Citeaux (not far from Dijon) was founded in 1098 by Robert de Molesnes, but it did not become the center of a movement until Saint Bernard entered it in 1113.] and the former by Saint Norbert in 1119 -- resumed the ascetic propaganda which the Benedictines had abandoned. In order that the prescription of manual labor be applied in all its rigor, they established themselves, by preference, in uncultivated regions where there was land to be cleared and drained. The princes made haste to help on the pius work by ceding tracts of moor and marshland to the monks. The two orders played a great part in draining the Flemish polders and bringing the soil of Eastern Germany into cultivation. The domains which they constituted there were of a completely novel type, in which we see, for the first time in the Middle Ages, the principle of large-scale agricultural exploitation. Instead of being parcelled out in family holdings, the newly-cleared area were organized into great farms, which were worked by "convert brothers" or free peasants under the direction of a monk. The cultivation of cereals or the breeding of cattle was practiced, not as formerly, with a view to immediate consumption by the convent, but for the purpose of sale in the markets... The profits realized enabled the monks to acquire more land, and to continue the work of bringing it into cultivation... [The proprietors of the old style domains are forced to monetize their holdings to raise cash. Quit-rent and similar methods free the peasants and allow the landowners to survive the inflation of money.] One may say that from the beginning of the 13th century the rural population, in Western and Central Europe, had become or was in the process of becoming a population of free peasants. And this great transformation was accomplished without violence, without the co-operation of principles and theories, as an inevitable consequence of the revival of trade and the appearance of the towns, which, by providing agriculture with the outlets of which it had hitherto been deprived, had compelled it to modify its traditional organization and to adopt freer and more flexible forms of exploitation. Economic progress had destroyed the social patronage which the seigneur had hitherto exercised over his men. In proportion as liberty was substituted for serfdom the landowner put off his old paternal character, and material interest tended to become the sole criterion of his relations with his tenants.