Economic history of Europe (1000 AD–present)

The manorial system, which existed under different names throughout Europe and Asia, allowed large landowners significant control over both their land and its laborers, in the form of peasants or serfs.

This resulted in increased productivity and nutrition, as the change in rotations led to different crops being planted, including legumes, such as peas, lentils and beans.

[3] Watermills were initially developed by the Romans, but were improved throughout the Middle Ages, along with windmills, and were provided the power needed to grind grains into flour, cut wood and process flax and wool, and irrigate fields.

Peas, beans, and vetches became common from the 13th century onward as food and as a fodder crop for animals; they also had nitrogen-fixation fertilizing properties.

A plague like the Black Death killed its victims in one locality in a matter of days or even hours, reducing the population of some areas by half as many survivors fled.

Viking raids and the Crusader invasions of the Middle East led to the diffusion of and refinement of technology instrumental to overseas travel.

Over the course of the centuries of this period towns grew in size and number, first in a core in England, Flanders, France, Germany and northern Italy.

Spinning, weaving, sewing and cutting were considered women's work until the mid-12th century when men began taking over some positions with more sophisticated industrial structures and technologies.

The 13 decades from 1335 to 1450 spawned a series of economic catastrophes, with bad harvests, famines, plagues and wars that overwhelmed four generations of Frenchmen.

The French and English armies during the Hundred Years War marched back and forth across the land; they did not massacre civilians, but they drained the food supply, disrupted agriculture and trade, and left disease and famine in their wake.

Spain proved adept at plundering the gold and silver of the Americas, but incompetent at converting its new wealth into a vibrant domestic economy, and declined as an economic power.

In eastern Europe, Russia suppressed the Tatar slave-trade, expanded commerce in luxury furs from Siberia and rivalled the Scandinavian and German states in the Baltic.

[19] Agricultural production of a variety of food items expanded: olive oil, wine, cider, woad (a source of blue dye), and saffron.

In subsequent decades, English, Dutch and Flemish maritime activity would create competition with French trade, which would eventually displace the major markets to the northwest,[where?]

By the middle of the 16th century, France's demographic growth, its increased demand for consumer goods, and its rapid influx of gold and silver from Africa and the Americas led to inflation (grain became five times as expensive from 1520 to 1600), and wage stagnation.

The monetary crisis led France to abandon (in 1577) the livre as its money of account, in favor of the écu in circulation, and banning most foreign currencies.

Meanwhile, France's military ventures in Italy and disastrous civil wars demanded huge sums of cash, which were raised with through the taille and other taxes.

Financial crises hit the royal household repeatedly, and so in 1523, Francis I established a government bond system in Paris, the "rentes sur l'Hôtel de Ville".

The modern or "second" British Empire was based upon the English Empire which first took shape in the early 18th century, with the English settlement of the Thirteen Colonies which in 1776 became the United States, as well as Canada's Maritime provinces, and the control of sugar plantation islands of the Caribbean, notably Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, the Leeward Islands, Barbados, Jamaica and Bermuda.

The government protected its merchants—and kept others out—by trade barriers, regulations, and subsidies to domestic industries in order to maximize exports from and minimize imports to the realm.

In Britain, the Industrial Revolution was a period of economic transformation from the 1750s to the 1830s, characterized by the growth of a new system comprising factories, railroads, coal mining and business enterprises using new technologies that it sponsored.

Numerous works comprising coke blast furnaces as well as puddling and rolling mills were built in the coal mining areas around Liège and Charleroi.

While the railroads revolutionized transportation, they further contributed to the growth of the industrial revolution by causing a great increase in the demand for iron and coal.

Governments became involved with new issues such as rationing, manpower allocation, home defense, evacuation in the face of air raids, and response to occupation by an enemy power.

The home front engaged in several activities to help the British army and navy, including taking down metal fences and gates to replace them with stone or wood.

[37] Historians reject the idea that it only miraculously revived Europe, since the evidence shows that a general recovery was already under way thanks to other aid programs, chiefly from the United States.

The Marshall Plan thus created in Europe an unstoppable "revolution of rising expectations," the striking phrase coined in 1950 by Harlan Cleveland, an economist and senior ERP official.

[39][38] Six European nations, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands took a step toward economic integration with the formation of a common market of coal and steel.

These nations' positions in output of refined raw materials, e.g. steel, and in finished goods fell in contrast to Asian countries.

[42] The nations involved in the initial treaty were Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain.