Economic medieval expansion: how it was possible economic growth during feudalism?

During the medium age there is an important growth (most of the cities founded during this period are the ones that we nowadays know).

What are the main reasons that produce this growth during this period?

Demographic expansion: along the IX and X centuries, the population has no growth, nevertheless during the centuries X to XIV the growth was higher.  Although this growth was difference if we take into consideration the country or area of study.

From the X century on, the peasant started to work in new lands.  Colonization enterprises were created by the lords to the detriment of hunting; law of diminishing returns explain this need to expand the land cultivated.

Agricultural expansion: to increase the agricultural production, it is needed an increase of the land, to be cultivated, trough the colonization.

There were three types of colonization:

• Enlargement of the land cultivated inside the area of the lords with major diversification of the goods, but the peasants must assume the cost of tilling the field (including the fallow).

• Foundation of new lands (Flandes, North of Italy, UK, Normandie,..).  New places, of hard access, are occupied by new enterprises, always funded by the Lords with the finality of collect the incomes from the work of peasants.

• Frontiers.  New lands are occupied beyond of current properties.  This fact allows to compensate diminishing returns and to increase the trading because of the excedent.

Technological change:

Introduction of heavy plow that allows a better and deeper furrow. Besides, the use of heavy plough makes that the land extracted is put out the furrow.  Another important introduction was the use of horses in detriment of oxes.

The culture system changes from a biennial rotation to a triennial rotation (wheat, legumes, fallow). The legumes allows that the land are not overusing (legumes have nutrients good for the land).

Both modifications allow an increase of the land productivity: the land cultivated is bigger and the farmers has the chance to organize the production in two periods of time: winter and spring.  Both periods allows too a better organization, and diversification of the land cultivated (it reduces the risk associated to bad crops).

The consequence of this change is well known: the population increase mean that the scarce resource, as labour, becomes abundant and the abundant resource, as the land, becomes scarce.  

The Lords are the owner of the lands, as consequence any excedent will be property of the people who has the lands, and not the ones who works in that lands.

Bibliography:

CAMERON, R. (1992): Historia Económica Mundial, Alianza (Madrid), caps. 1, 3, 5-10 y 12.

Preindustrial Europe: institutional framework

The middle age is characterized by the feudalism.  The economic organization is independent and autonomous with little relationship with exterior.  In this system the serfs must pay rents to the lord including their work.



During the feudalism existance, it developed several problems regarding the economic organization:

• The first one is the poor productivity; a bad year must be sufficient to cover the subsistence level, but in a good year the problem with the warehousing means spoiled of the foods.  As consequence the level production is the minimal to avoid any waste of resources.  According to George Duby's study:

 "A great change in productivity, the only one in history until the great advances of the 18th and 19th centuries, occurred in Western Europe between the Carolingian period and the dawn of the 13th century", 

Before of that the waste of resources was inexistent, so the reason is the poor productivity.

• Another problem of this system is the vigilance.  If the serfs are not under control, they will work as less as possible: "there is no supervision, there is no control, as consequence poor productivity".

In other words, the incomes of the lord depend of the work of the serfs.  The lord offers protection in exchange of the work of the serfs, because the work is a limited resource and the land is an abundant resource.



The mankind starts to realize about the importance of the labour in the economic organization.

Bibliography:

CAMERON, R. (1992): Historia Económica Mundial, Alianza (Madrid), caps. 1, 3, 5-10 y 12.

Technological change: how technology relates to economic change

New inventions, better production techniques than produce more efficiently, better organization and management of firms, better training, better transport and communications all come under the banner of technical progress.

All these things allow a country to increase output.  Progress and investments often go together when old machines are replaced by new, more sophisticated machines that can work faster.

However, is the technological change able to explain the economical change? is it the more importante factor?

Joel Mokyr (1946) states that the technological change is a very important factor but not the decisive one.  The institutional framework is the fundamental factor of technological change through the incentives.

The technological change, according to this author, is any change in the use of the information, regarding to the production, with the end to increase the efficacy.  The consequence of this process is to produce more with less resources or the production of new and better goods (innovation; concept that Mokyr links up with diffusion).

When the institutional framework allows the flow of information, the diffusion is posible.  According to Mokyr the invention is an exogenous factor; if the diffusion exists, the innovation is posible because the invention has been diffused.

Lynn White (1907 - 1987) treats to explain how the stirrup invention is caused by the feudalism.  In many occasions the invention already exists, however there is no application for it, as consequence there is no technological change because there is no diffusion.

http://licn.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/09/technical-progress-john-dunn-consultant-ambertec-pe-pc.html

During the feudalism because of costs maintenance of the defence, the feudal lords decided to use the stirrup because the cost of horse rider maintenance is lower than a soldier; this is mainly because of the quantity of them to defence the lands, it is needed less horse riders than soldiers.

Bibliography:

Cameron R. (1992).  Historia Económica Mundial.  Alianza.  Capítulo 1.

North, D.C.,  y Tomas, R.P. (1989).  El nacimiento del mundo occidental.  Una nueva historia económica (900-1700).  Capítulos 1 y 2.