But the resources that had created the Europe of the 12th and 13th centuries survived these crises: first the European countryside and then the cities were rapidly repopulated. It is the resiliency of Europe, not its weakness, that explains the patterns of recovery in the late 14th and 15th centuries.
The apparent prosperity of the 16th century gave way in the middle and late periods of the 17th century to a “general crisis” in many European regions. Politically, the new centralized states insisted on new levels of cultural conformity on the part of their subjects.
By 1500 the population in most areas of Europe was increasing after two centuries of decline or stagnation. The bonds of commerce within Europe tightened, and the “wheels of commerce” (in the phrase of the 20th-century French historian Fernand Braudel) spun ever faster.
The 16th century was a period of vigorous economic expansion. This expansion in turn played a major role in the many other transformations—social, political, and cultural—of the early modern age. By 1500 the population in most areas of Europe was increasing after two centuries of decline or stagnation.
Financial crashes were common; the Spanish crown, the heaviest borrower in Europe, suffered repeated bankruptcies (in 1557, 1575–77, 1596, 1607, 1627, and 1647). The poor and destitute in society became, if not more numerous, at least more visible.
The 16th century was a period of vigorous economic expansion. This expansion in turn played a major role in the many other transformations—social, political, and cultural—of the early modern age.
Merchants, entrepreneurs, and bankers accumulated and manipulated capital in unprecedented volume. Most historians locate in the 16th century the beginning, or at least the maturing, of Western capitalism.
Second, advances in knowledge and technology helped to make the Age of Exploration possible .
The Impact of Exploration on Europe. The voyages of explorers had a dramatic impact on European commerce and economies. As a result of exploration , more goods, raw materials, and precious metals entered Europe. Mapmakers carefully charted trade routes and the locations of newly discovered lands.
They sailed south from Portugal and Spain to South America, to lands where the Incas lived. They traveled to Africa, past the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. The crew of one Portuguese expedition even sailed completely around the world. European explorers changed the world in many dramatic ways.
Asian spices / Creative Commons. For early explorers, one of the main motives for exploration was the desire to find new trade routes to Asia. By the 1400s, merchants and Crusaders had brought many goods to Europe from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Demand for these goods increased the desire for trade.
Their work led to new ideas about government, human nature, and human rights. The Age of Exploration, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment helped to shape the world we live in today.
Another great change during the early modern age was the Scientific Revolution. Between 1500 and 1700, scientists used observation and experiments to make dramatic discoveries. For example, Isaac Newton formulated the laws of gravity.
European countries claimed large parts of the world. As nations competed for territory, Europe had an enormous impact on people living in distant lands. The Americas, in turn, made important contributions to Europe and the rest of the world.
The process of rural and urban expansion and development indeed paused in the 14th century as famine, epidemic disease, intensified and prolonged warfare, and financial collapse brought growth to a halt and reduced the population for a time to about half of the 70 million people who had inhabited Europe in 1300.
No longer were its edges simply its borders with the Islamic world. Improved techniques in both navigation and marine engineering led Europeans from the 13th century to cross and map first their local seas, then the west African coasts, then the Atlantic and Pacific.
For a long time historians considered these disasters dramatic signs of the end of an age, especially because they already believed that the Renaissance had emerged following the collapse of medieval civilization.
From the late 15th century Europe began to export itself once more, as it once had to the north and east from the 10th to the 15th century, this time over vast oceans and to continents that had been unknown to the Greeks and Romans.
Only from a highly selective and partial historical perspective was there ever, as the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga once termed it, a “waning,” “autumn,” or “end” of the Middle Ages.
Probably the most important development throughout the Agricultural Revolution was the intensification of agricultural output through new farming techniques, namely the development of crop rotation systems that involved turnips and clover.
The Agricultural Revolution, from 1750 on to 1850, can best be explained as a massive success in the development of European populations. In pre-revolution England, the population was basically capped by the ability of the British to provide homegrown food. Some scholars believe that the English population had reached the near-1750 levels before, but, for a multitude of reasons not least of which the inability to feed more people, the population would never exceed these levels. England had a population of around 5.7 million people in 1750.