Merchant colonies outside feudal fortresses founded medieval Europe’s cities.
Evidence
In the beginning, before they could properly be described as bourgeoisie, these merchants traveled from region to region, their survival a matter of their mobility and their ability to capitalize on the frequent ruptures and breakdowns of the reproduction of populations sunk into the manorial soil. Their mobility may have also been occasioned by the fact that many of them were not free-born and thus sought respite from their social condition by flight from their lords: “By virtue of the wandering existence they led, they were everywhere regarded as foreigners.” For security they often traveled in small bands—a habit that would continue into their more sedentary period. It was not long before they began to establish porti (storehouses or transfer points for merchandise) outside the burgs (the fortresses of the Germanic nobles) bishoprics and towns that straddled the main routes of war, communications, and later, international trade. It was these porti, or merchant colonies, that founded, in the main, the medieval cities of Europe’s hinterland. It was at this point that the merchants of Europe became bourgeoisies (burgenses). — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 142
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- Europe’s bourgeoisie originated as roving, often unfree foreign merchants who founded the medieval cities. (similarity 0.91)
- Sixteenth-century bourgeoisies were not lineal descendants of medieval ones (similarity 0.81)
- The Absolutist State, not the merchant town, created the modern bourgeoisie (similarity 0.80)
- Italian merchant cities were the only medieval colonial power (similarity 0.79)
- The western European merchant class was socially extrinsic to feudalism (similarity 0.78)
- Italian merchant city-states emerged from crusade logistics into commercial trade (similarity 0.78)