History Lesson II: The Medieval Era

Good day all.

Today I will show you how the medieval era was one of cultural destitution for the Western world. I say Western world because Asia was doing comparatively better at the same time. Compared to Europe, China, India, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Arabia, and east Africa were much better off. At the time, none of these nations could imagine Europe achieving anything. It was the backwater of the civilized world. Even the Incas and Aztecs were more advanced in some respects. So how did the West, after the fall of the Roman Empire, manage to return itself to something closer to what we think of it now?

One of the problems of Europe was the sheer number of states. Each one was small and ruled in a tributary manner, so that capital accumulation, the key to development, was almost impossible. Without money to develop lands and commerce, these states were dependant on every last morsel of grain they could extract from their crops. States were run in a feudal manner, so that intense hierarchical divisions enforced the non-economic means by which any surplus in foodstuffs was extracted from the producing class. This is known as the Tributary Social Formation.

In exchange for handing over a crop's surplus, the peasant was given protection from barbarians, justice, and other rudimentary social services. They were bound to their land and the extractions associated with it. What the lord did not take, the Church did. A tithe was levied which could amount to 10% of a farmer's yeild. All these taxes and levies ensured that the producing class was very poor, and this system was enforced by rigid customs and military force.
The ABJECT DEPENDANCE on the Roman Church was largely maintained through fear. Pay up or Satan (or his forces, be it Huns, Barbarians, Mongols, Turks, Saracens....) will get you. Meanwhile the Church was the wealthiest institution in Europe, pulling in far more than any state until the 1400's. Thus the Church and its corresponding beliefs became a crutch to assist an ignorant and fearful people through a difficult time. It gained in wealth and temporal power at the expense of the liberty of others. It served no real economic function and coerced the population into obeying the strict feudal law. Worst of all, the Medieval Church was intolerant. Jews, Muslims, and eventually in 1054 Byzantines (Orthodox Christians) were excluded and even harassed. The Church and its monastic institutions enforced illiteracy by carefully editing or completely banishing non-sacred texts, and even religious texts were only written in Latin which was unknown to the vast majority of people. Thus the Church reinforced ignorance and fear in order to continue its economic parasitic nature while becoming a fortress of conservative notions that non-representative leaders used to bolster their tyranny. The Church was one of the greatest contributors to the slow development of the West.

With small states and with capital accumulation being very difficult, consumerism became the domain of the lay and religious elite. They extracted any surplus there might be and spent it on luxuries and their own gluttony. Their intolerance and greed led to what we call the CRUSADES. The Crusades were adventures in looting and hate thinly veiled as faith-based inititives. By the 11th century contact between states was sufficiently reestablished so that the wealth of the Byzantine Empire was renouned. It became clear that this wealth was the result of COMMERCE with the Middle East and Islam. That Jerusalem was there was only a minor convenience. In fact, Muslims at the time were very advanced and increadibly tolerant. They allowed Christian pilgrims to visit Jerusalem and other holy sites at leisure. The Muslims were great mathematicians, navigators, merchants, and philosophers. They worked with Christian and Jewish scholars on common projects, especially in Cordova (Cordoba, Spain). Further, they were the middlemen in the trade with China and India, whose products were in great demand since the resources and manufactures of Europe were of very poor quality. So in 1098 the First Crusade was assembled and launched.

The results of the Crusades were bloody and ultimately futile. The Holy Land was only held briefly, and at that by despotic warrior-kings who despised their more liberal Muslim subjects. They did manage to extract a great deal of wealth, knowledge, and technology however. This generated a voracious taste for eastern goods within Europe's markets. The exchange between these Crusader kingdoms and Europe was facilitated by Italian city-states such as Venice and Genoa. Their rise was directly the result of this trade. In the 13th century Venice, with other allies, invaded Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), capital of Byzantium in order to fully control this trade. The Italian city-states would provide the model for the Merchant Capital Social Formation, which we shall see in part III.

Byzantium was the remnants of the former Eastern Roman Empire. It was the only great state in Medieval Europe. Byzantium was plagued by two great drains on its wealth: the Church, and warfare. The Church, which became an independant institution from Rome in 1054, was closely tied to the state and its massive bureaucracy and its opulence was the cause of a great extraction of capital. Warfare was also costly, and constant. Like the Western Roman Empire, Byzantium was constantly under seige from tribes and peoples displaced by Mongolian movements. It also had to contend with rising Russian and Bulgarian states nearby. The greatest threat of all was Islam, a very large neighbour that had consumed half of Byzantium's territory by the 9th century. Christianity owes its preservation to the defensive wars fought by and around Constantinople. Despite constant warfare, a very advanced diplomatic system was established between the Islamic empires and Byzantium so that in times of peace they became most fruitful merchants with each other.

In 632 a man named Mohammed, prophet of Allah died. In the wake of his death, his prophecy spread through Arabia, the Middle East, Africa, India, and Indonesia. Muslims were also common in China and had conquered all of Spain. France was next, if it were not for the Battle of Poitiers in 732. Islam continued to be a strong force into the 18th century, and besieged Vienna in Austria in the 17th century. That Europe was not wholly consumed by Islam is due to luck alone. Near 40% of the civilized world was in their hands by 1450. Islam gave Europe many great inventions, such as the quadrant, the compass, advanced mathematics, and other inventions and ideas all the way from China. Possibly the greatest favour they performed for Europe was to capture Constantinope and dismantle the Byzantine state in 1453. With the fall of that great centre of trade, the Turks closed the western terminus of the Silk Road and goods from China and India, coveted by Europe's elite, became very difficult and costly to obtain.

By 1450, Europe was very little different than it had been after the fall of the Roman Empire had set in. Only a few minor changes came into play to make something of Eurasia's backwater. In the mid 15th century two things occured which would revolutionize the European world: one of them was Gotenburg's Printing Press; the other was occuring on the remote tip of the Iberian Penninsula in a nation called Portugal.

In the next installment we will explore the Merchant Capital Social Formation, its effects on European society, and Europe's monopoly of VIOLENCE AT SEA.

Fare well for now.