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SECTION 1 Trading Centers

SECTION 2 Merchants

SECTION 3 Living Conditions

SECTION 4 The Rise of Guilds

SECTION 5 Cultural Changes

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• guilds

• apprentice

• masters

• journeyman

• Dante

• Geoffrey Chaucer

Terms to Learn People to Know

• Venice

• Flanders

Places to Locate

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Trading Centers• The growth of trade led to the rise of the

first large trading centers of the later Middle Ages, located on important sea routes connecting western Europe with the Mediterranean Sea, Russia, and Scandinavia.

• Two of the earliest and most important trading centers were Venice and Flanders.

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• Venice was an island port in the Adriatic Sea, close to the coast of Italy, founded in the 500s by people fleeing from the Germans.

• Venice’s prosperity spread, and other Italian seacoast towns became shipping centers.

• However, while Italian trading towns quarreled among themselves over profits and trade routes, towns along Europe’s Atlantic coast developed trade routes, becoming more powerful than those in Italy.

Venice

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• Flanders, which today is part of Belgium, was an area of small towns on the northwest coast of Europe.

• Flanders became the earliest Atlantic trading center.

• Flanders became an important stopping place for ships traveling from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and an important link in the trade route between Constantinople and the North Sea.

• By 1300, the most important trading partner of Flanders was England.

Flanders

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Merchants• Sea trade grew, an overland trade route

connected Italy and Flanders, and other routes spread across Europe.

• Merchants became an important part of European life during the late Middle Ages.

• The first merchants were mostly adventurers who traveled in armed groups for protection.

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• Merchants traveling along the chief route through eastern France stopped to trade at special gatherings called fairs.

• The yearly fairs were sponsored by nobles who collected taxes on sales.

• Goods were purchased with precious metals instead of bartering. Italian money changers tested and weighed coins from many different lands to determine their value.

• From the banc, or bench, at which the money changers sat comes the English word “bank.”

Fairs

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• Merchants grew tired of moving around and began to choose places along a trade route near waterways or road crossings to settle permanently.

• The towns came to be called burgs because they were often near castles, which the Germans called burgs.

• The new towns grew steadily and attracted people and artisans as the markets became centers of business and social life.

The Growth of Towns

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Living Conditions• By the 1200s, many towns were wealthy

and large enough to have their palisades replaced by walls and towers.

• The crowded conditions and open sewers made towns unhealthy places.

• During the 1300s, diseased rats came to Europe on trading ships from the Middle East carrying a plague called the “Black Death.”

• The disease swept through Europe, killing millions of people.

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• Merchants and artisans controlled a town’s business and trade.

• At first, burghers meant the merchants, artisans, and workers who lived in towns; later the title meant rich merchants.

• The burghers checked their products at the docks and market and met with business partners.

Burgher Life

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• Under the feudal system, kings, nobles, and bishops, who taxed the people in the towns and charged them fees to use the marketplace, owned the town land.

• The burghers resented feudal laws as not suited to business.

• The burghers had wealth and power, so they began to depend less on nobles and bishops, and developed a sense of loyalty toward their town, working together to build schools, hospitals, and churches.

Changing Ways

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• In the 1100s, townspeople in northern Italy formed political groups called communes, whose purpose was to work against the nobles and bishops and for the people by establishing local self-government.

• Some kings and nobles gave the townspeople charters, or documents allowing towns to run their own affairs.

• The towns enforced their own laws and set up special courts.

Communes and Charters

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The Rise of Guilds• Around the 1100s, merchants, artisans, and

workers formed guilds, business groups whose purpose was to make sure that their members were treated equally.

• Craft guilds controlled the work of artisans such as carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, masons, tailors, and weavers.

• Guilds controlled all business and trade in a town, and only members could buy, sell, or make goods.

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The Rise of Guilds (cont.)

• Guilds were more than business or trade groups; they were the centers of social life.

• A person had to be an apprentice, or trainee under a master, or expert, in a trade for two to seven years to become a member of a guild.

• The next step was becoming a journeyman, or a person who worked under a master for a daily wage.

• By 1400, many merchants and artisans had begun challenging the control of the guilds.

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Cultural Changes• During the 1400s, merchants, artisans, and

bankers became more powerful, leading to the decline of feudalism.

• The townspeople had more leisure time and money to enjoy art and books.

• Most townspeople used such languages as German, French, and English.

• A scholar named Dante wrote the Divine Comedy in Italian, one of the most famous poems of the Middle Ages.

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Cultural Changes (cont.)

• Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales in English.

• The townspeople came to believe that they should be free to develop their talents and to improve their way of life.