ECONOMICS IN THE DARK AGES.   Term Paper ID:17743 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Development of money-based economy, AD 500 to AD 1100. Gold, fiduciary money, coinage.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Development of money-based economy, AD 500 to AD 1100. Gold, fiduciary money, coinage. Paper Introduction: Introduction The most conspicuous feature of the economic life of the early Middle Ages, or Dark Ages (c. AD 500AD 1100) is a virtual absence of money and of the characteristic features of a money economy  economic specialization, longdistance trade, commercial towns. Instead, the early medieval economy was rural and locally selfsufficient, and society as a whole was correspondingly "rusticated." This rustication appears vividly in our (relatively few) pictures of the Dark Ages. A striking example is the description of court life in Einhard's biography of Charlemagne (Einhard 4552). The court life of medieval Europe's greatest king is surprisingly simple, compared to later highmedieval royal courts. Charlemagne lives similarly to an ordinary minor Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Instead, the early medieval economywas rural and locally self-sufficient, and society as a whole wascorrespondingly "rusticated." This rustication appears vividly in our (relatively few) pictures ofthe Dark Ages. This represented at once an attempt to revive amarket economy by providing a more available coinage, and an admission thatthe Western European economy of ca. Until around 1 5 , Muslimwar fleets and merchant ships dominated the Mediterranean. Bythe High Middle Ages, the rusticated economy of Dark Ages Europe hadalready been transformed into a money economy more extensive and advancedthan anywhere else (save perhaps China). On the one hand, the feudal economy,though still largely self-sufficient and rustic, grew steadily in absoluteterms as new land went under the powerful moldboard plow and water-millsproliferated in estates and villages across the landscape. The Life of Charlemagne. The Fourth Crusade(12 2-12 4) gave Venice a hold in the East that was challenged effectuallyonly by Genoa and other Italian rivals. Instead, King and retinue mustendlessly "progress" from estate to estate. But this gradual growth ofthe European market coincided with a dramatic growth in the participationof Italian city-states in Mediterranean trade. By about 11 , the new system of waterways was well-established;older towns away from the rivers decayed, and new ones grew up along theirbanks. Introduction The most conspicuous feature of the economic life of the early MiddleAges, or Dark Ages (c. Peter in Rome. High-Medieval Europe was tied together by waterways,rivers and increasingly, canals. He struckit with the Arabic motto "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is HisProphet," along with the Islamic date from the Hegira (Bloch 24 ). Capitalism and Freedom. In the pages that follow we will trace the decline of moneyin the early Middle Ages, and its revival as the period drew to a close. Most of all, his court is ever-wandering; the Frankish economy cannotcommand the resources to maintain even this modest royal establishment year-round at any single site such as Aachen. Still struckoccasionally in Merovingian times by the Carolingian period, they hadbecome oddities. To build a financial system in the first place requires the evolution ofacceptable money out of barter, followed by the generalization of thatmoney into fiduciary money. Yet this was in a part of the world that had previously belonged tothe sophisticated money economy of classical antiquity, and which soon (inItaly by AD 11 ) would itself take the lead in commercial and financialdevelopment. The startling expansion of Italian trade that began after 1 reached its culmination by the thirteenth century. London: Duckworth, 1982.Lewis, Archibald R. Roman Europe had been tied together by roads, designed mainly foruse by armies, and of economic use mainly to merchants with low-bulk, high-value merchandise. Dark Age Economics: The Origin of Towns and Trade AD 6 - 1 . In Belgium (later one of the first areasto revive) we find fortified houses - prototype castles - by the late ninthcentury (Hodges 189). At some point, probably in thirteenth century Genoa, some accountinggenius introduced double-entry bookkeeping. The generalincrease of population and gradual development of the underlying materialeconomy increased the demand of Europe's upper classes for traditionalEastern luxury goods. The demands of itssophisticated upper class supported extensive trade, as did the maintenanceof imperial institutions such as the army. When the imperial system wasbroken and the upper class grew self-sufficient and rusticated, theclassical commercial economy died for lack of sustenance. Venice: The Hinge of Europe. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1962.Hodges, Richard. Other standard moneys wereintroduced farther north; the Flemish thaler, for instance. Ausonius lived in a socialworld that was still recognizably that of classical antiquity: an urbanand urbane upper class indulging in quasi-literary pursuits and consumingforeign luxuries. Land and Work in Medieval Europe. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1974.----------------------- 1 By about 13 , the economic transition was complete. Gold, because of its high value to weight, isa natural medium for this vital transitional stage. The dramatic increase of Italian shipping in the Eastern luxurytrades was accompanied, moreover, by a humbler but equally profound trend:increasingly, bulk goods as well as luxuries were traded in the moneyeconomy. The Venetians, for instance, wontheir commercial privileges in battle, first as allies and then asconquerors of the Byzantines (McNeill 21). Sidney Painter. Later, the experience of theCrusades would greatly add to the economic demands of the ruling classesthroughout Europe, as more of their members experienced Eastern luxuriesfirst-hand. The Vikings brought havoc to regions near the coast or majorrivers. It is for that reason that the near disappearance of gold can betaken as marking the rustication of the Western European economy. The re-emergence of a money economy spelled the end of the Dark Ages andtransformed Europe into one of the world's most developed regions by thetime of the High Middle Ages and Renaissance. The significance of gold lies most of all in its role as lubricant inthe first developing, tentative stages of trade. The development of a money economy in Europe thus was rooted inmilitary as well as commercial prowess. "Inflation" in the centuries after Charlemagne had the effect ofmaking money more readily available, eventually driving the return to gold(Bloch 238). This by itself would have brought an enlargement of the money sectorof the economy, but without other factors the enlargement would have beenmore modest, and would have been measured in traditional Eastern currenciessuch as Byzantine hyperpyra and Islamic coins. Therenaissance of trade was short-lived, cut off in the period of chaos thatfollowed for a century on Charlemagne's death. It was essentially an aristocratic consumingcivilization, but urban in its complexion. The future of theWest as an economic region never seemed darker. Thus the extraordinary case of King Offa of Mercia, whominted a gold coin to send to the treasury of St. The principal coinage of classical antiquity was gold, and post-classical gold coins such as the Byzantine hyperpyron continued tocirculate in the West throughout the Dark Ages, though in small numbers.Locally-struck gold coins essentially vanished (Block 186ff). Cash no longer bought only imported luxuries, buteveryday necessities. 7 -8 was incapable of supporting agold coinage that could circulate in Mediterranean trade as well (Bloch188). The one class of transactions for which coins wereclearly called were payments to the government itself; thus theintroduction of coinage into a largely money-less economy is in largemeasure a declaration of statehood. By the High Middle Ages, we find traditional in-kind rentsbeing commuted into money rents, indicating that landlords now found coinsboth socially appropriate and generally negotiable, not merely of use forpaying fees or fines to the king. Ed. A century later, Gregory of Tours lived in a socialworld already akin to Charlemagne's: riding and hunting have replacedurban styles of high living. Western Europewas thick with towns, towns which were more organic in their economic lifethan the essentially parasitic, administrative towns of Roman times.Western European gold coinages had become the Mediterranean standard, andwere themselves being gradually supplanted by moneys of account. Emporia of long-distancetrade which had flourished, relatively speaking, in the earlier Dark Agecenturies now went into decline. A striking example is the description of court life inEinhard's biography of Charlemagne (Einhard 45-52). When inflation brought thevalue of the penny more or less into line with the value of a loaf of breador mug of ale, money could be introduced into the most ordinarytransactions. Given a well-managedbanking system, such a mature economy can dispense with a commodity mediumentirely. The military growth of the West was part ofthe same equation; the profits of trade helped support Italian navalenterprise - and later the Crusades - while those enterprises in turn addedto trading profits. Conclusion In this great transition, money played the part of both cause andeffect. As the economy developed, it was able to support a more elaboratecivilization. This marked an immense stepforward in the management and control of financial data, and along withrelated developments greatly facilitated the growth of fiduciary money. Foreign luxuries remain valued status symbols(they never disappeared), but they are no longer as central to the lives ofthe upper class. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 196 .Friedman, Milton. Yet it was precisely inthe calamitous decades around AD 9 that the seeds of high-medievalEurope's economic power began to sprout (Hodges 151ff). Yet the Carolingian coinage was also of limited application. Political and social fragmentation reached amaximum. In the earlier period, even the lowest-denomination coinswere too valuable for everyday transactions. This can only happen however, in a mature financial system where thenegotiability of fiduciary money has been demonstrated by broad experience. Classical gold coinage had failed as a medium to tie Europe togethereconomically, so, evidently, had Carolingian silver. Works CitedBloch, Marc. (Thus, an early Caliph declared hisautonomy from Byzantine hegemony by placing his own image on gold coinssent to Byzantium as tribute; Lewis 89.) Turnaround One of the fundamental reforms of Charlemagne regarded the coinage;the Carolingians introduced the silver-based system of the Middle Ages(Hodges 11 -11), which survived until a few years ago in Britain's pounds,shillings, and pence. The court life ofmedieval Europe's greatest king is surprisingly simple, compared to laterhigh-medieval royal courts. Many rents or fees were paid preferentially in kind, moneybeing a sort of second-best, and this was as much for social as for"economic" reasons (Bloch 24 ). The scarcity of specie in the Dark Ages made it difficult for long-range trade to "get off the ground." Once money became available insignificant quantities, trade grew and increased the demand further, andeventually matured to the point where fiduciary money could replace metalspecie as the actual basis of the financial system. Berkeley: U of California, 1967.Einhard. The efficiency of water transport wassuch that even bulk goods could be transported profitably over somedistance. The growth of trade in basic bulk goods vastly increased thenumber of transactions in the money economy - and made them more relevantto the real economy. AD 5 -AD 11 ) is a virtual absence of money and ofthe characteristic features of a money economy - economic specialization,long-distance trade, commercial towns. Rustication The lives of two Gaulish literary notables of around AD 5 and AD6 respectively, Ausonius and Gregory of Tours, underline the profoundchange in economic and cultural life that took place in the westernprovinces of the Roman Empire in this period. As a comparison, consider the second-classstatus of money as a Christmas present; utilitarian but less "thoughtful"than a material gift. The gold ducat and florin -Venetian and Florentine standards of money - became the principal moneys ofaccount throughout the Mediterranean not long after their introduction inthe later thirteenth century (Bloch 189-9 ). Princeton, NJ: Princeton U, 1951.McNeill, William H. Naval Power and Trade in the Mediterranean, AD 5 - 11 . Quite abruptlythe balance began to shift, and by the time of the First Crusade, Italiancities like Pisa, Genoa, and Venice were sending galley fleets to supportthe Crusaders and - not unintentionally - capture the bulk of Eastern tradefor themselves (Lewis 225-49). In any highly developedcommercial economy, most transactions come to be handled in "moneys ofaccount," fiduciary measures and instruments that have no direct relationto coins or ingots of precious metal (Friedman 4 ff). It is difficult to separate cause and effect in the re-emergence of amoney economy after around AD 1 . Charlemagne lives similarly to an ordinaryminor Frankish noble. In general, money was a special-purpose medium in the Dark Ages(Hodges 1 5). The significance of this is that classical antiquity was not a trulycommercial civilization. From this point, in effect, an economic "take-off" becamepossible: increased demands for more specialized goods of all kinds drovetrade, which made more goods available and thus further stimulated demand,generating still more trade. Gold coins commandedconfidence over a vast area, and remained "legal tender" for long-distancetrade. These moneyswere so successful that their names are still familiar to us today (indeedour word "dollar" is a mere variant on thaler). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.