Medieval European Economies, AD 400–1500

Abstract

Ocran provides an overview of the dominant European kingdoms in the middle ages, especially after the collapse of the Roman Empire. He also sheds light on the economic system in Europe at the time: manorialism and feudalism. Medieval Europe was often associated with weak central governments, even when they existed. The widespread fragmentation of sovereign power in medieval Europe at the time is notable. Ocran also describes how the emergence of the town economy hastened the gradual erosion of feudalism as an economic order in Western Europe. Before the resurgence of European empires between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, the Byzantium Empire and the Islamic Empires that were very prominent three centuries earlier were all in decline. It was around the thirteenth century that the foundations of capitalism began to be laid in Western Europe. He discusses the devastation of the bubonic plague in Europe and the Italian renaissance that emerged in the late Middle Ages.