HIST-338 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Manorialism
21 Nov 2020
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Document Summary
But by the thirteenth century, most major cities had within their confines either banks of their own or offices of foreign banks. Many of these banks had quite fantastic sums of capital at their disposal: After the proliferation of collective manors in the tenth and eleventh centuries, relatively few major structural or technological changes took places in rural life in the twelfth and thirteenth. In order to provide more food for the urban and international markets, manors across europe grew significantly in size. Since there were no major advances in farming methods to increase the yield per acre of farmland, landowners chose instead to produce more farmland: They felled forests, drained marshlands, and brought meadows under the plow. This clearing meant more work for more peasants, the populations of manors and villages increased accordingly. But the rhythms and workings of daily life continued on much as they had done before with at least two important changes.
