ABSTRACT

The building trade, at any rate that part of it working for governments and great corporations, perhaps resembles more closely its medieval predecessors than any other large-scale modern enterprise. Land transport was limited by bad roads. Apart from a few places in Lombardy, there was no network of metalled roads made as people know, so that the haulage of carts was severely restricted even in good weather, and often became impossible in winter rains. In the general economic decline of the later Middle Ages the incentive to improve roads and waterways was thus continuously present: the smaller the profits the more important it became to reduce transport costs. Economic historians have naturally concentrated their attention on the great centres of trade and on the capitalist economy engendered by long-distance commerce. The grand commerce' of later medieval Europe was concerned with practically every available raw material and manufacture.