Economics!!! check attchments.
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lect4a_western_europe.pptxLect4a Western Europe
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Medieval Economic Revolution
After 1000 CE, population growth stimulated development of new land; Dutch construction of sea walls; windmills and water wheels for energy; large horses to pull plows through clayey soils; communal plowing of fields
Growth of trade and towns; towns granted autonomy by kings in return for revenue; towns run by merchant guilds but with rights for residents: “town air makes one free”
Medieval Economic Revolution
Merchants devised their own commercial laws; towns needed protection from local lords; kings often provided that
Putting-out system in place by 1200; cheap labor in the cottages; town guilds allowed spinning but opposed weaving; townsmen went into cottages to destroy looms, but were not able to do so in England; by 1500 England was exporting some of its wool in the form of cloth
Technological Change
Water wheel for energy: used for grinding grain, bellows for iron production, fulling cloth, pulping rags for paper; Europeans were looking for ways to save labor by using energy and machines, perhaps because of more favorable resource endowment per person
Eyeglasses invented in Florence around 1290; initially to correct age-related far-sightedness; prolonged working life of artisan
Mechanical clock in 1200s; every town wanted one
Printing press 1450 by Guttenberg; rolling mill idea; special inks
Gunpowder (from China); corning the powder to control explosion
Technology from China
wheelbarrow, stirrup, paper, horse collar, gunpowder, compass, water clock, porcelain, silk
Why did technological progress slow down in China? Landes:
1. Govt interference in market: e.g. prohibit foreign trade
2. Cultural values: gender relations
3. Totalitarian state regulated life, discouraged innovation
Why did Europe favor Innovation? (Landes)
Judeo-Christian respect for manual labor
Judeo-Christian subordination of nature to man
Judeo-Christian sense of linear time
Above all, the market
Landes put emphasis on “culture”: values, attitudes, and beliefs; I prefer to emphasize “incentives”: opportunities and constraints; these are conditioned by “institutions” (patterns of behavior that give rise to expectations)
