ABSTRACT
In the later Middle Ages, Europe had two great concentrations of wealth and power: the Italian city-states which had grown rich from the luxury trades between Asia and Europe (‘The Renaissance’ in Part IV), and the north German towns of the hanseatic league which controlled commerce in the products of northern seas, mines, forests and farms. The southern Netherlands was another region of burgeoning economic activity during the fifteenth century, when its industry and commerce helped the Duchy of Burgundy emerge as a serious rival to the Kingdom of France. However, during the sixteenth century, Europe’s economic centre of gravity shifted away from these foundations as medieval patterns of trade were supplemented and surpassed by new routes for commerce, opened by voyages of discovery made from Portugal and Spain during the fifteenth century. Reaching into the Atlantic Ocean from Lisbon and Seville, these routes extended to Africa, Asia and the Americas, hugely expanding European economic, political and cultural horizons and bringing into Western Europe resources that were gradually to transform its economies and societies (Appendix Maps 3-4).
