1. Reasons for Population Growth
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Reasons for Population Growth
In 1200 c.e., most Europeans were peasants, bound to the land in serfdom and using inefficient agricultural practices.
Fifteen to thirty such heavily taxed farming families supported each noble household.

2. Reasons for Population Growth
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Reasons for Population Growth
Europe’s population more than doubled between 1000 and 1445.
Population growth was accompanied by new agricultural technologies in northern Europe, including the three-field system and the cultivation of oats.

3. Reasons for Population Growth
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Reasons for Population Growth
As population grew, people opened new land for cultivation, including land with poor soil and poor growing conditions.
This caused a decline in average crop yields beginning around 1250.

4. Black Death Background
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Black Death Background
The population pressure was eased by the Black Death (bubonic plague)
Brought from Kaffa to Italy and southern France in 1346.
The plague ravaged Europe for two years and returned periodically in the late 1300s and 1400s, causing substantial decreases in population. Between 25 – 50 million die in Europe alone! 1/3 the total pop.

5. Social Effects of the Black Death
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Social Effects of the Black Death
Serfdom in Eastern Europe grew extensively in the centuries after the Black Death.
Rural living standards improved, the period of apprenticeship for artisans was reduced, and per capita income rose. More Meat less people.

6. Economic Effects of the Black Death
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Economic Effects of the Black Death
As a result of the plague, labor became more expensive in Western Europe. Less people, less skilled workers.
This gave rise to a series of peasant and worker uprisings, higher wages, and the end of serfdom.

7. Areas that lead urban revival
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Areas that lead urban revival
Increases in trade and in manufacturing (wind and watermills) contributed to the growth of cities after 1200:
Venice & Genoa – Mediterranean Trade networks
Champagne – French trade routes
Flanders – Wool textile industry, imported.
Florence & England – textile(s)

8. Prominence of urban areas
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Prominence of urban areas
The growth in commerce gave rise to bankers like the Medicis of Florence and the Fuggers of Augsburg, who handled financial transactions for merchants, the church, and the kings and princes of Europe.
Guilds regulated the practice of and access to trades.

9. Social conditions for Jews in Urban Europe
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Social conditions for Jews in Urban Europe
Most of Europe’s Jews lived in the cities. Jews were subject to persecution everywhere but Rome; they were blamed for disasters like the Black Death and expelled from Spain where the had once prospered under Muslims.
Because the Church prohibited usury (interest), many moneylenders were Jews; Christian bankers got around the prohibition through such devices as asking for gifts in lieu of interest.