ABSTRACT
In th e late Middle Ages, England was an economic and politi cal backwater, distant from Europe's largest concentrations of w ealth and power. These lay far to the south, in the Mediterranean, where the Italian city-states had grown rich as intermediaries in the luxury trades between the east and no rthern Europe, and to the north , in the German towns, where the H anseatic League controlled the richest flow s of commerce in th e products of northern seas, mines, fore sts and farm s. During the sixteenth century, however, Europe 's economi c centre of gravity shifted away from these traditional foundations . After 1500, medieval patterns of trade w ere increasingly supplemented by new maritime routes for commerce, op ened by voyages of discovery made from Portugal and Spain during the late fifteenth century. R eaching into the Atlantic Ocean from Lisbon and Seville , these routes reached towards Africa, Asia and the Americas , bringing into Europe resources that w ere to transform its economy in the centuries that followed.
