READ: Europe 1200-1450

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If you went back to the year 1230 and asked someone “Where’s Europe?” they would have been very confused by the question. The place we now call Europe was barely an idea at that time, but between 1200 and 1450, it was slowly becoming a reality. Europe, including many parts of the Mediterranean, would be defined by Catholicism, a widespread agricultural (manorial) and social system (feudalism), and political fragmentation. These help us understand what made European states function in unique ways before 1450.

From the tenth through the fourteenth centuries European communities enjoyed a period of remarkable growth. Across the two regions populations rose rapidly, commerce increased in scale and complexity, arts and culture flourished, and cities multiplied and grew. In many places, populations reached levels not seen again until the eighteenth century. This was an age of colonization and expansion, and of engagement with long-distance exchange across Afro-Eurasia. Such a general upturn was not unique to Europe and the Mediterranean, and was driven in part by increased access to trade, ideas, and people from across Afro-Eurasia.

In the fourteenth century, everything began to change. Following a sudden wave of crop failures and cattle epidemics, in the late 1340s an epidemic struck first the Mediterranean, then Europe. It was known as the Black Death, but we know today that it was the bubonic plague, caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis. Waves of plague swept through Europe for the next half-century, causing widespread deaths and reversing population growth. As a consequence, the population of European communities may have fallen by a third to half—yes, half!—between 1300 and 1400. At the same time, political instability would lead to new cycles of conflict in France known as the Hundred Years’ War, and in northern Italy, Germany, Spain and the eastern Mediterranean. We see how the long period of growth prior to 1300 was replaced by one of instability.

What had happened? From roughly the ninth century through the early fourteenth the northern hemisphere experienced what scientists now call the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA). This was a period of warm, stable weather. Farming was easier, long-distance travel was safer—especially over water—and people were healthier. In the fourteenth century, the global climate abruptly changed. By the fifteenth century, Europe was firmly in the grasp of what historians call the Little Ice Age (LIA): a long-term period of consistently cold, wet, and unstable weather. The history of climate helps explain Europe’s population growth and expansion, which took place during the favorable MCA. The abrupt shift to the tumultuous LIA helps us understand the sudden turmoil and crisis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

This long period of growing and shrinking would have a major impact even after it ended. Major social and cultural structures became embedded in European states. Two are particularly significant: the way agriculture worked, and political fragmentation.

Before 1500, most premodern people lived in rural areas as subsistence farmers. Europe was a world of villages; the Mediterranean a world of cities and villages. Today we tend to think of a village as a quaint escape from urban areas, but back then a village was a basic political, religious, and economic unit. It was a group of families, their farmland and pastures, a church, and some common natural resources such as woods, fields, and streams. Most villages were legally controlled by a powerful local figure or association, like a lord, a knight, or a religious order. This owner claimed a portion of the village’s labor and produce, as well as the power to distribute justice, typically managing things from a large home or estate called a manor. The manor served as a symbol of power and place to store and display wealth. Because of this widespread pattern of rural life, the years from 1200 to 1450 are often described as being dominated by the “manorial system.”

European agriculture was a lot of things, but efficient wasn’t one of them. Even during the warm and stable Medieval Climate Anomaly, crop failures and famine were common, and few families were able to produce enough to feed themselves, let alone sell to the market. Crops and livestock were produced in such limited quantities, the only reliable way to make more food was to work more land. As the population grew, and uncultivated areas turned into farms, access to land became more difficult. Land was by far the most valuable resource in medieval Europe. It was literally worth killing for, and control of land dominated politics for centuries.

In addition to controlling access to land, many lords sought to control those who worked it. Almost everyone who lived in Europe were farmers—perhaps 80-90 percent—yet most did not own their land. The fields they worked were owned by the lord of the manor, and they were given access in exchange for giving up many rights and entering into obligations. They might be required to give a portion of their harvest to the lord, or to use the lord’s flour mill, or be prevented from leaving the village without permission. For this reason, most families were peasants—agricultural workers who faced legal restrictions and lacked control of their land. Some households were so bound to the land and lord both legally and physically, that they were deeply impoverished. People in these households were known as serfs.

It was upon this shaky foundation that European communities built their economic and political worlds. Agriculture drove the economy, and prosperity was tied to harvests. City growth depended on the food drawn from rural communities, and control over their countryside. There were regional contrasts, and the environment of the Mediterranean produced different kinds of foods and communities than in Europe north of the Alps.

From 1200 to 1450, Europe and many parts of the Mediterranean were politically decentralized and fragmented. By 1200, political power in much of Europe was devolved—meaning more power was given to local authorities than to central authorities. In most places, local elites such as nobles, church officials, city councils, and knights had direct control of resources and the law, and were responsible for defending their areas. This made some sense in a time when communication and travel were slow and uncertain: locals could more easily extract resources and respond to security threats. This system of devolved powers and divided hierarchies has often been called feudalism, and is one of the defining features of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Just as the manorial system established a relation between peasants and the land, the feudal system organized the relationship between local leaders and kings.

What did it look like in practice? A king might grant a powerful lord authority over a province, in exchange for certain promises. The lord gained control of the tax, land, and laws of that province, and in exchange the king received promises of military support and good governance. The lord would then grant parts of the province to his followers in the same manner. One village might go to a knight who swore support, another to a monastery which agreed to pray for the lord’s soul. All of them relied on the labor of the many peasants below them. The result was a world of hierarchies and obligations—everyone owed something to the person above them, and took from the person below.

Because local rulers each had different kinds of authorities, society became very fractured. Each grant was a separate agreement that had to be negotiated. The knight might be granted certain legal powers—say, the right to tax the village mill. The monastery next door might be granted different powers—perhaps they weren’t powerful enough to demand more, or perhaps the area was poorer or richer—say, the right to claim one bushel of wheat from the mill, but not to tax it.

High and low, power depended on the threat of violence, and feudalism produced powerful warriors and warlords. Using force to control access to land and extract resources from peasants perpetuated the system. It also meant that central powers, like kings, were often extremely weak. The King of France, for instance, directly controlled only a few provinces right near Paris. Many cities had their own laws and councils which acted almost independently of the king. Large states quickly broke apart into smaller principalities across Europe. In Germany, an extreme case, a single state broke into hundreds of smaller political units, governed by a weak emperor. As local lords became more powerful, they demanded more political participation. In many places this led to the creation of deliberative bodies, made up of elites and religious representatives, who sought to share power with the monarch. Some of these—including the Parliament in England, the Estates in France, the Cortes in Spain—would go on to become powerful institutions.

The years 1200 to 1450 are often overlooked, yet this was a crucial moment in the history of European communities and the idea of Europe. As we have seen, this is when basic structures related to agriculture, social organization, political divisions, and long-term growth developed and became widespread. Perceived weaknesses and instability would lay the groundwork for the rapid changes of the early modern period.

Jack Bouchard is a historian of fishing, food and island environments in the early Atlantic. He serves as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library with the Before “Farm to Table”: Early Modern Foodways and Culture project.