| How were Towns and Trade established during the Renaissance? |
| Towns grew very slowly. They were usually surrounded stone walls (most probablly for defence).Streets were usually wound about a castle, cathedral, hillside or habor's shoreline. The higher strories of buildings were sometimes over a street. The life of the industrial people would simply just follow a certain routine. For example a candle maker would buy his wax from a weekly market and would take orders from his customers before he made the candles.He would then make these amount of candles and then sell them out the from of their house. The Renaissance had a feudal way of working. Their were lords and barons who were ultimately powerful over all the impoverished. There was an upper class and a lower class with no middle. In some cases in larger towns the more lower class townsmen could pay a tax to a baron rather than work for him if he was proficiant at his trade. But in the times of the Renaissance most towns were small and not much bigger than villages. As late as 1250 London only had about 25,000 people in residence. Other towns such as York and Bristol only had a bout 10,000 people in residence and most of the towns of England had about 1,500 - 4,000 people in population. BUt in other parts of the continent the towns were much larger and influencial and in these places the clash between trade expansion beyond the local became distinctive features of the age of the Renaissance. In the event that local merchants tried to continue to trade beyond the interchange of goods between local villages, towns, and markets, they met many problems. Gulids for instance which were established soley for local trade, were hostile to outsiders. So as an example Londoners were forgeiners at Bristol. Rulers were more interested in charging tolls and taxes than encouraging trade. During the Renaissance few decent roads or bridges were built and also lighthouses and navigational aids were seldom. The moving of goods was usually on a pack-horse, sailboat or even rowboats. Another set back was that geographical ideas were very vague and robbers and pirates were feared more than natural disasters. There was no depenable money system and credits were seldom used. Weights and measurements as well as coinages were of local arrangement rather than over a large area. Considering these conditions there was a surprising amount of growth of trade and towns during the 14th and 15th centuries. Only the Crusades encouraged trade growth as new methods of trade were discovered and the urge for exploration was hungered. |