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3 - THE TAKE-OFF OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2009
Summary
THE USES OF AGRICULTURAL SURPLUS
Even as demographic growth was a prime motor of agricultural progress, so agricultural progress was an essential prerequisite of the Commercial Revolution. So long as the peasants were barely able to insure their own subsistance and that of their lords, all other activities had to be minimal. When food surpluses increased, it became possible to release more people for governmental, religious, and cultural pursuits. Towns re-emerged from their protracted depression. Merchants and craftsmen were able to do more than providing a fistful of luxuries for the rich and a very few indispensable goods for the entire agrarian community. From this point of view, it is proper to say that the revolution took off from the manor.
It takes more than food surplus, however, to reorient a society from agrarian balance to commercial restlessness. We have seen that the Roman slave-exploiting landowners, who controlled the larger part of agricultural surplus, did not participate actively in business; commerce and industry expanded to a point, then settled down in golden mediocrity. The medieval lords on the whole were still more contemptuous of trade; the best one would expect of them was that they might patronize a slightly improved version of commercial and industrial mediocrity. A pattern of this kind may be observed in the long history of China, in spite of obvious differences in detail. China's ancient economy and society had many points in common with those of ancient Rome:
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- The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 , pp. 56 - 84Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1976