Editing Commercial revolution (section)

==Origins of the commercial revolution==
The term itself was used by [[Karl Polanyi]] in his ''The Great Transformation: "''Politically, the centralized state was a new creation called forth by the Commercial Revolution...".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Polanyi|first=Karl|author-link=Karl Polanyi|year=2001|orig-year=1944|title=The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time|url=https://archive.org/details/greattransformat00karl/|location=Boston|publisher=Beacon Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/greattransformat00karl/page/69 69]|isbn=978-0-8070-5643-1}}</ref> Later the economic historian [[Roberto Sabatino Lopez]],<ref>{{cite book |author=Robert Lopez |title=The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages |url=https://archive.org/details/commercialrevolu00lope_006 |url-access=limited |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=[New York] |year=1976 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/commercialrevolu00lope_006/page/n67 56]–147 }}</ref> used it to shift focus away from the English [[Industrial Revolution]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Ejvind Damsgaard Hansen |title=European Economic History |publisher=Copenhagen Business School Press |location=[Copenhagen] |year=2001 |page=47 |isbn=87-630-0017-2 }}</ref> In his best-known book, ''The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages'' (1971, with numerous reprints), Lopez argued that the key contribution of the medieval period to [[European history]] was the creation of a commercial economy between the 11th and the 14th century, centered at first in the Italo-Byzantine eastern [[Mediterranean]], but eventually extending to the [[Italian city-states]] and over the rest of Europe. This kind of economy ran from approximately the 14th century through the 18th century.<ref name="the_basics_of_economics">{{Cite book  | last1 = O'Connor | first1 = David Kevin | title = The basics of economics | url = https://archive.org/details/basicseconomics00ocon | url-access = limited | year = 2004 | publisher = Greenwood Press | location = Westport, Conn.  | isbn = 978-0-313-32520-5|page = [https://archive.org/details/basicseconomics00ocon/page/n78 48] }}</ref> [[Walt Whitman Rostow]] placed the beginning "arbitrarily" in 1488, the year the first European sailed around the [[Cape of Good Hope]].<ref name="how_it_all_began_a04-107">{{Cite book  | last= Rostow | first= Walt Whitman  | title= How it all began : origins of the modern economy | year = 1975 | publisher = Methuen | location = London  | isbn = 978-0-416-55930-9 | page = 107 }}</ref> Most historians, including scholars such as [[Robert S. Lopez|Robert Sabatino Lopez]], [[Angeliki Laiou]],  Irving W. Raymond, and [[Peter Spufford]] indicate that there was a commercial revolution of the 11th through 13th centuries, or that it began at this point, rather than later.<ref name="money_and_its_use_in_medieval_europe_a01">{{Cite book  | last1 = Spufford | first1 = Peter | title = Money and its Use in Medieval Europe | url = https://archive.org/details/moneyitsusemedie00spuf_680 | url-access = limited | year =1988  | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location =Cambridge  | isbn = 978-0-521-37590-0 | page = [https://archive.org/details/moneyitsusemedie00spuf_680/page/n253 240] }}</ref><ref name="Medieval_Trade_in_the_Mediterranean_World">{{Cite book  | last1 = Lopez | first1 = Robert | title = Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World | year =1955  | publisher = Columbia University Press | location = New York | isbn =  978-0-231-12356-3 | pages = 9, 50, 69, passim }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Kathryn Reyerson |title="Commerce and Communications" in David Abulafia ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5 |publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge |year=1999 |pages=50–1 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Angeliki Laiou |title="Byzantium and the Commercial Revolution" in G. Arnaldi ed., Europa medievale e mondo bizantino |publisher=Istituto Storico per il Medioevo, Studi Storici 40 |location=Rome |year=1997 |pages=239–53 }}</ref>

===Maritime republics and communes===
{{see also|Maritime republics|Medieval communes}}

[[File:Venezianische Kolonien.png|thumbnail|The [[Venetian Empire]]]]
Italy first felt huge economic changes in Europe from the 11th to the 13th centuries. Typically there was:
* a rise in population―the population doubled in this period (the demographic explosion)
* an emergence of large cities (Venice, Florence and Milan had over 100,000 inhabitants by the 13th century in addition to many others such as [[Genoa]], [[Bologna]] and [[Verona]], which had over 50,000 inhabitants)
* the rebuilding of the great cathedrals
* substantial migration from country to city (in Italy the rate of urbanization reached 20%, making it the most urbanized society in the world at that time)
* an agrarian revolution
* the development of commerce

In recent writing on the city states, American scholar [[Rodney Stark]] emphasizes that they married responsive government, Christianity and the birth of capitalism.<ref>Stark, Rodney, ''The Victory of Reason'', New York, Random House, 2005</ref>  He argues that Italy consisted of mostly independent towns, who prospered through commerce based on early capitalist principles and kept both direct Church control and imperial power at arm's length.

Cambridge University historian and political philosopher Quentin Skinner<ref>Skinner, Quentin, ''The Foundations of Modern Political Thought'', vol I: ''The Renaissance''; vol II: ''The Age of Reformation'', Cambridge University Press, p. 69</ref> has pointed out how [[Otto of Freising]], a German bishop who visited central Italy during the 12th century, commented that Italian towns had appeared to have exited from feudalism, so that their society was based on merchants and commerce. Even northern cities and states were also notable for their [[maritime republics]], especially the [[Republic of Venice]] and [[Republic of Genoa|Genoa]].<ref>Martin, J. and Romano, D., Venice Reconsidered, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, 2000</ref>  Compared to absolutist monarchies or other more centrally controlled states, the Italian communes and commercial republics enjoyed relative political freedom conducive to academic and artistic advancement. Geographically, and because of trade, Italian cities such as Venice became international trading and banking hubs and intellectual crossroads.

Harvard historian [[Niall Ferguson]]<ref>Ferguson, Niall, ''The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the World''.  Penguin, 2008</ref> points out that Florence and Venice, as well as several other Italian city-states, played a crucial innovative role in world financial developments, devising the main instruments and practices of banking and the emergence of new forms of social and economic organization.

It is estimated that the per capita income of northern Italy nearly tripled from the 11th century to the 15th century. This was a highly mobile, demographically expanding society, fueled by the rapidly expanding [[Renaissance]] commerce.

In the 14th century, just as the Italian Renaissance was beginning, Italy was the economic capital of Western Europe: the Italian States were the top manufacturers of finished woolen products. However, with the [[Black Death]] in 1348, the birth of the English woolen industry and general warfare, Italy temporarily lost its economic advantage. However, by the late 15th century Italy was again in control of trade along the Mediterranean Sea. It found a new niche in luxury items like ceramics, glassware, lace and silk as well as experiencing a temporary rebirth in the woolen industry.

During the 11th century in northern Italy a new political and social structure emerged: the city-state or [[medieval commune|commune]]. The civic culture which arose from this ''[[urbs]]'' was remarkable. In some places where communes arose (e.g. Britain and France), they were absorbed by the monarchical state as it emerged.  They survived in northern and central Italy as in a handful of other regions throughout Europe to become independent and powerful city-states. In Italy the breakaway from their feudal overlords occurred in the late 12th century and 13th century, during the [[Investiture controversy]] between the Pope and the [[Holy Roman Emperor]]: [[Milan]] led the Lombard cities against the Holy Roman Emperors and defeated them, gaining independence ([[battle of Legnano|battles of Legnano]], 1176, and [[battle of Parma|Parma]], 1248; see [[Lombard League]]).

Similar town revolts led to the foundation of city-states throughout medieval Europe, such as in Russia ([[Novgorod Republic]], 12th century), in Flanders ([[Battle of Golden Spurs]], 14th century) in Switzerland (the towns of the [[Old Swiss Confederacy]], 14th century), in Germany (the [[Hanseatic League]], 14th–15th century), and in [[Prussia]] ([[Thirteen Years' War (1454–66)|Thirteen Years' War]], 15th century).

Some Italian city-states became great military powers very early on. Venice and Genoa acquired vast naval empires in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, some of which threatened those of the growing Ottoman Empire.  During the [[Fourth Crusade]] (1204), Venice conquered a quarter of the Byzantine Empire.

The [[Maritime Republics]] were one of the main products of this new civic and social culture based on commerce and exchange of knowledge with other areas of the world outside western Europe. The [[Republic of Ragusa]] and the [[Republic of Venice]], for example, had important trade communications with the Muslim and Hindu world and this helped the initial development of the Italian [[Renaissance]].

By the late 12th century, a new and remarkable society had emerged in Northern Italy, rich, mobile, and expanding, with a mixed aristocracy and urban ''borghese'' ([[:wikt:burgher|burgher]]) class, interested in urban institutions and republican government. But many of the new city-states also housed violent factions based on family, confraternity and brotherhood, who undermined their cohesion (for instance the [[Guelphs and Ghibellines]]).

[[Image:Italy 1494 shepherd.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Italy in 1494, after the [[Peace of Lodi]]]]

By 1300, most of these republics had become princely states dominated by a [[Signore]]. The exceptions were [[Republic of Venice|Venice]], [[Florence]], [[Lucca]], and a few others, which remained republics in the face of an increasingly monarchic Europe. In many cases by 1400 the Signori were able to found a stable dynasty over their dominated city (or group of regional cities), obtaining also a nobility title of sovereignty by their formal superior, for example in 1395 [[Gian Galeazzo Visconti]] bought for 100,000 gold [[Florin (Italian coin)|florins]] the title of [[Duke of Milan]] from the emperor [[Wenceslaus, King of the Romans|Wenceslaus]].

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, [[Milan]], Venice, and [[Florence]] were able to conquer other city-states, creating regional states. The 1454 [[Peace of Lodi]] ended their struggle for hegemony in Italy, attaining a [[balance of power in international relations|balance of power]] and creating the conditions for the artistic and intellectual changes produced by the [[Italian Renaissance]].