the re-emergence of cities

• Geschiedenis
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 1

The re-emergence of cities

Learning goal

Goal 4: You can explain how agricultural changes resulted in the re-emergence of cities.

What do you already know about the Age of Cities and States? (discuss with your classmate)

How was the situation in Europe during the Age of Monks and Knights?

Was there a lot of trade possible during the Age of Monks and Knights?

What profession did a lot of people have during the Age of Monks and Knights?

1. They were monks
2. They were knights
3. They were tradesmen
4. They were farmers

Word Duty

Trade in kind: trading products for different products.

Mayors: officials who ruled the city with the help of the city council, often they came from the elite families in the city. 

Monatery Economy: an economomy where people don't longer trade in kind but use money as a means to trade.

City rights: privileges that a city had. For instance: Building of a town wall, administering justice itself and the right to collect tolls.

Hanseatic League: an alliance of cities to make trading between them more attractive.

Citizen: an inhabitant of a city or state who has certain rights and is free.

KEY WORDS

Safety

During the Age of Cities and States the Viking raids stopped and Germanic  rival clans stopped fighting eachother => increased safety.

Possibillity to travel again > Possible to trade => long distance trading

Write down the red text in your notebook!

Improvements in Agriculture (around the year 1000 AD)

• More and better farmland was created > cleared forests, drained swamps and peatlands > higher agricultural yields.
• Also inventions to make farming easier: crops being rotated troughout the different seasons and the iron plough.

Write down the red text in your notebook!

The rotating of crops

• If farmland was used every year, the land became infertile, which meant that the harvest became less and less.
• Agricultural land was divided into three pieces, with one piece of land not being used (fallow) each year. 

This allowed the land to recover and increased yields.

Write down the red text in your notebook!

Braak

🐄

Zomergraan

🏖

How does it work?

Year 1 

Year 2 

Year 3 

Wintergraan

☃️

Zomergraan

🏖

Braak

🐄

Wintergraan

☃️

Braak

🐄

Wintergraan

☃️

Zomergraan

🏖

Increase of trade

• Improvements in agriculture yield more harvests
• Surpluses are sold or traded in markets > Trade in kind
• Money is increasingly used as a (convenient) means of exchange in time > return Monetary Economy
• Traders went to different countries and took other products (wine or silk) with them.

Write down the red text in your notebook!

emergence of cities

• Traders often come to the same place: to spend the winter and store their belongings.
• These places are in good locations: crossroads of roads and/or rivers, usually near a castle or monastery
• Marketplaces develop in these places
• Slowly, settlements evolve around these marketplaces, growing into cities. => urbanisation

Write down the red text in your notebook!

City rights and specialisation

• All inhabitants of a piece of land had to be obedient to the lord (Feudal system).
• Even the inhabitants of cities, but they preferred to be their own master
• The lord did not mind a powerful and rich city at all: imagine all that wealth!
• The inhabitants of the town and lord made agreements, laid down in city rights (stadsrechten)
• In addition, not everyone had to be a farmer anymore > new professions emerged > Specialisation

The city of Dordrecht was granted town rights by Count Willem I of Holland in 1220. This makes it one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands

Write down the red text in your notebook!

Town rights

• The city ruled itself by appointing Mayors and a city council.
• A town with city rights may build a city wall
• The city could administer justice itself, but an official (the bailiff) of the lord had to be present and a share of the fines was for the lord.
• The inhabitants of a city were free porters / citizens (They were not property of the lord and/ or serfs)
• In exchange for these rights, the town must pay taxes
• Cities were also allowed to collect tolls.

Schrijf de rode tekst over in je aantekeningenschrift!

International contacts

• Travel was safer -> traders went greater distances.

• Annual fairs: Northern France/Flanders, this is where products/ traders from all over Europe and beyond gathered.

• collaborations of cities: Hanseatic League (Hanze)

explain how agricultural changes resulted in the re-emergence of cities.