The rise of original industrialization in Western Europe

Author: Wang Jiafeng et al. / Country of Origin:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: This book focuses on the origins of proto-industrialization in Western Europe, comprehensively discussing the development and fundamental characteristics of rural handicrafts in the late Middle Ages. It introduces the origins and evolution of the proto-industrialization theory, aiming to provide a relatively comprehensive introduction and evaluation of this theory, which has been widely discussed for over thirty years. It outlines the basic processes and characteristics of the development and evolution of rural handicrafts in Western Europe before the late 15th century, explores the rise and fall of rural handicrafts in Western Europe's pre-industrial society and the emergence of proto-industrialization. Using rich historical materials, it conducts in-depth research on the origins and development of proto-industrialization in Italy, the Netherlands, and Britain, helping readers understand the complexity and diversity of proto-industrialization in Western Europe. It also theoretically examines the relationship between proto-industrialization, industrialization, and de-industrialization, as well as population changes during the proto-industrial period. The consequences of this process are self-evident—it directly promoted the development of cities and concentrated industry and commerce. In the past two decades, we have repeatedly emphasized that medieval cities were a part of feudal society, but the arguments were not sufficient. Without explaining the emergence of urban industry and commerce from the perspective of the need for changes in feudal manors, as Bloch did, it failed to demonstrate the relationship between urban industry and commerce and changes in feudal manors. A subsequent question arises: Does this transformation in France have universal significance for Western Europe? Bloch believed, "The weakening of corvée labor and the reduction of manorial estates were observed as special phenomena in France, not present in other European countries." However, he emphasized that Britain and Germany also experienced the same process, but "a century or two later" ②. Clearly, the reasons for this may be: these two countries' feudalization processes were later than France, the development of urban life was also later than France, the wars between the 9th and 11th centuries were not as frequent as in France, their large manors were not as developed as in France, and so on. Lords abandoned the management of large manors for two reasons. On one hand, managing large manors was difficult, and the relatively isolated lifestyle was not conducive to lords dealing with surplus agricultural products and acquiring what they needed. On the other hand, due to the specific feudal system in Western Europe, establishing cities or markets not only solved the above problems but also increased income. It was precisely these two reasons that led lords to develop cities and markets between the 11th and 13th centuries, abandoning the self-sufficient manorial development model. From this, we can draw an important conclusion: Western Europe's feudal system contributed to the concentration of industry and commerce, not in workshops within manors, but in cities or large villages. Of course, this does not mean that there was no handicraft in the countryside—along with the development of production, rural handicrafts also developed. Four English manorial management documents from the 13th century help us understand the relationship between English manors and markets (urban handicrafts) and rural handicrafts. The four existing English manorial management documents from the 13th century are "Henley's Manorial Management," "The Manorial Management of an Unknown Author," "The Duties of the Manorial Steward," and "The Ordinances of Grosssteste." From these documents, we can see that many handicraft products in ordinary agricultural manors came from the market. For example, "The Ordinances of Grosssteste" stipulated: "I advise you to carry out your main procurement activities in two seasons of the year, that is, buy wine, wax, and clothing from the St. Botolph Fair, and daily necessities from Lindsey, Norfolk, the Belvoir Valley, Winchester in Shropshire, and Somerset in Bristol; robes and the like from St. Ives." This passage shows that the manors at that time were already closely linked to the market and had accumulated extensive trading experience. However, rural handicrafts still played an important role in the normal operation of manors. "The Duties of the Manorial Steward" wrote: "The steward and bailiff must regularly inspect the houses under their charge, as well as walls, ditches, fences, two-wheeled carts, four-wheeled carts, plows, harrows, sheepfolds, and other damages and losses, so that they can detect and repair them early, and avoid incurring greater losses due to their negligence, which could have been as little as 12 pence but ended up costing 1 mark. The value of each item depends on regular maintenance." At that time, there were roughly two types of rural craftsmen—the ones belonging to the manor and the ones not. In "The Manorial Management of an Unknown Author," there is a passage: "First, let's discuss the issue of cart costs. It is reasonable to have a certain amount of money in the blacksmith's hands to purchase plows and to provide steel and iron for horseshoes for horses and aged draft animals, but it should also be based on the spending patterns of similar areas in the countryside and the blacksmith's bargaining. Materials that the manor does not have and must be purchased externally should be bought at fair prices. If it is possible to hire carters and plowmen who also know how to process wood, that would be even better, although their wages would naturally be higher." Here, the "blacksmith," "carter," and "plowmen" all appear to be hired; but the "blacksmith" was likely a professional craftsman, an independent entrepreneur, but with an exceptionally close relationship with the manor; the latter were part-time craftsmen. The phrase "spending patterns of similar areas in the countryside" indicates that these craftsmen generally lived in the countryside. There were also craftsmen belonging to the manor, but these manor-owned craftsmen received extra compensation for their handicraft work. For example, the same document stated: "If someone in the manor is familiar with the process of making ropes for transport carts and twists them into ropes and ropes, they should receive a subsidy." "The Duties of the Manorial Steward" listed "workshops" as one of the manor's assets, indicating that workshops in English manors still existed at that time, though they could also be understood as places where tools were repaired and not workshops that produced certain products year-round. When discussing rural handicrafts during this period, it is necessary to examine the control or monopoly that rural lords had over some rural household tools, primarily referring to the privilege of forcing farmers to use the manor's mills, bakeries, and cider or wine presses. Starting from the 10th century, "many lords began to use their power to force the peasants on their estates to use their mills, of course, for a fee. Large lords even demanded that the peasants on the estates under their jurisdiction, which were subject to their judicial and administrative authority, use their mills. This trend of centralization was accompanied by technological progress: human and animal power was eventually replaced by water power." This was not just a product of France—"Britain also had the forced use and monopoly of mill sales, to the extent that beer was forced to be purchased. Germany was the same, almost all of France's monopoly powers existed there, but it was France that took this system to the extreme. No country had more extensive estates than France, and no country had as complex and diverse economic activities in each estate as France." From a positive perspective, the lords' control helped separate agriculture and handicrafts relatively, and contributed to the concentration of technology and handicrafts. Another feature of rural handicraft development during this period was the mixing of urban and rural handicrafts in many larger settlements, which could be called cities or villages, essentially large villages. Since establishing markets was a profitable venture for feudal lords, they competed to establish markets and grant charters to many of them, resulting in numerous small industrial and commercial agglomeration points, which were actually slightly larger villages. The 14th–15th Century Turning Point In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the economic revival of medieval Western Europe came to an end, entering a turning period, and the development of rural handicrafts underwent a significant shift, with the overall trend preparing conditions for the rise of proto-industrialization. In other words, when further agricultural development seemed impossible, rural handicrafts showed new development trends. Of course, this shift was initially slow and only became clearer and accelerated by the late 15th century. The widespread and extensive development of rural handicrafts was a remarkable socio-economic phenomenon in pre-industrial England, as some economic historians estimated, and this development contributed to the trend of the industrial focus before the Industrial Revolution leaning toward the countryside. During this period, Western Europe's rural handicrafts had already undergone some qualitative changes compared to traditional handicrafts in terms of production scale and methods. The southwest counties of England, East Anglia, and the western part of Yorkshire were three major rural woolen textile bases, with production scales expanding. By the 1990s of the 14th century, Somerset in England produced over 12,000 pieces of woolen cloth, becoming the county with the largest output, while Wiltshire's output exceeded 7,000 pieces, ranking second. In Western Europe outside England, rural industry also developed during the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 1940s of the 14th century, two regions showed strong development momentum: one in Bohemia, mainly focused on mining gold, silver, and zinc; the other in South Germany, where, following Italy's example, cheap linen and other mixed fabrics woven in rural and small towns entered the market. The tenants of the ancient Abbey of St. Gall, who had previously only woven cloth for themselves and their lords, now developed the abbey into a village and became one of the important towns for weaving linen. Some of the original handicraft centers in Western Europe, despite the declining urban handicrafts, gradually strengthened rural handicrafts, especially textiles. In the 15th century, rural textiles rose to varying degrees in Flanders, northern Italy, northern France, and some parts of Spain. By the mid-to-late 15th century, rural industry in Western Europe had become relatively common and had formed some centers. In Flanders, when some of the originally prosperous handicraft centers began to decline, rural and small-town industry developed rapidly. In addition to woolen textiles, rural mining, smelting, shipbuilding, arms, salt production, soap boiling, alum production, and glassmaking also rapidly developed. In 1357, a British merchant operating tin mines owned seven mines and employed 300 workers. Brescia in Italy, Nuremberg in Germany, and Liège in Belgium stood out in iron production due to their proximity to iron mines. Someone calculated that in 1475, about a quarter of the population in the Upper Palatinate's Upper Rhine region worked in the iron smelting industry, including 750 miners, more than 3,000 transport workers, 5,180 logging and charcoal workers, and other various skilled and unskilled workers, with a total of over 11,000 people. Additionally, construction was also a very important rural handicraft.