C5:Economic development-Trade, exploration, prosperity & depression Flashcards
What was the population of England at the beginning of the 15th century?
2.2 million
What percentage of the population lived in towns?
10 per cent.
How many towns had more than 3000 people?
no more than 20
What were the main industries in urban areas?
wool and cloth
Why did sheep farming increase in the 1480s and 1490s?
Arable farming became less profitable and the increased demand for wool, as the population grew and trade overseas developed.
What is mixed farming?
a system of farming which involves the growing of crops as well as the raising of animals as livestock.
What is pastoral farming?
farming involving the rearing of animals - either for animal by-products such as milk, eggs or wool, or for meat.
What were common rights?
denotes the legal right of tenants to use common land, for example for keeping animals; the exact nature of these rights varied from place to place.
What was open-field husbandry?
the form of landholding which predominated in most of ‘lowland’ England. The manor was a specific landed estate whose tenants farmed strips of land found in open fields and who enjoyed common rights, particularly for keeping animals. This system came under increasing pressure by enclosure in some parts of the country as the sixteenth century unfolded.
What percentage of England’s exports was the cloth trade responsible for?
about 90%
due to the finished cloth now dominating the cloth trade what did this lead to?
the development of weaving, usually done as a domestic process, and fulling and dyeing, which were commercial enterprises.
Who were the merchants of the staple?
incorporated by royal charter in 1319, they controlled the export of wool; the staple was based at Calais (an English possession) from 1363, but the eventual decline in the wool trade reduced the company’s importance.
what is fulling?
a step in woollen cloth making which involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt and other impurities, making it thicker in the process.
What opportunities did the rise in the cloth trade result in for rural areas?
the increase in rural employment to supplement agrarian incomes.
What cloth towns were extremely prosperous?
Lavenham in Suffolk and Lewes in Sussex.
Why did some historic cities such as Winchester and Lincoln suffer significant decay due to the booming cloth industry?
the cloth industry tended to move from older corporate boroughs to newer manufacturing centres in smaller market towns and villages in East Anglia, the west riding of Yorkshire and parts of the West Country.
What reinforced London’s commercial dominance within the country and established a commercial axis with Antwerp?
an increasing proportion of the finished cloth was exported from London through the Merchant Adventurers.
What was the Hanseatic league?
a group of free cities originating in the thirteenth century, which came together to form a commercial union with the intention of controlling trade in the Baltic Sea; the league dominated commercial activity in Northern Europe from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.
What were the Merchant Adventurers?
founded in 1407, they were a trading organisation which came increasingly to dominate London’s cloth trade with Antwerp.
Why was The Merchant Adventurers positive relationship with the Crown immensely important?
On the one hand they could act as the voice of the industry when its commercial needs were subordinated to national policy; on the other hand, the king increasingly used their expertise in the negotiating of trade treaties such as the Intercursus Magnus and the Intercursus Malus.
Why could the Merchant Adventurers not enjoy complete domination of trade?
they had been unable to overcome the trading privileges enjoyed by the Hanseatic league
why may Henry VII have supported treaties that reasserted the trading privileges enjoyed by the Hanseatic league despite the fact that English merchants might lose out?
he needed to ensure that the Hanseatic league would offer no support to the Yorkist claimant to the throne, the Earl of Suffolk.
what did Jack Lander say about the sacrifice of English trading interests to prevent the de la pole threat?
‘out of all proportion to the feeble threat’ posed by the de la Poles.
what is metallurgy?
the scientific study of the extraction, refining, alloying and fabrication of metals, and of their structure and properties.
