ABSTRACT
From the eleventh century a general expansionary movement manifested itself in the West in diverse regions and in various forms. The basis for this movement must be sought in the stabilisation which the West achieved from the middle of the tenth century, when the devastating invasions from Hungary and Scandinavia finally came to an end. The stagnation of the colonisation of the Holy Land after the thirteenth century gave a new impulse to the movements of colonisation to the continental peripheries of Europe itself. The Roman network of roads was built primarily to enable the state to fulfil its administrative and military functions. In later centuries no political unit was able to build roads on a similar scale and with the same technical standards as the Romans. Demographic growth triggered west-European expansionism in the form of the Christian advance in Iberia, the western Mediterranean and eastern Europe.
