How did the development of towns signal the end of feudalism and the entry of Europe into a new era?

Answer 1

The rise of towns took serfs off the manors and gave them other places to work and live. The early serfs who did this included a number of people who were legally runaways, but it seems that if they had been gone from the manor for a year, they were no longer subject to it.

The fact that people were making livings by means other than agriculture made money important, and this made it easier for the serfs who remained on the land to pay rent instead of providing their lords with a part of a crop. This meant, in turn, that they could take on side livings, such as ceramics, weaving, milling, and other jobs. And this further weakened their bondage.

The rise of mercantilism, guilds, and banks, all depended on the rise of towns. These produced middle class organizations that rivaled nations in power. One example was the Hanseatic League.

Answer 2

During the height of the feudal age (9th to 11th centuries), trade in Europe was almost at a standstill. The manor, by developing economic self-sufficiency, made the exchange of products almost unnecessary. Furthermore, merchants were unwilling to ship goods any considerable distance because of piracy on the seas and banditry on land, continuous feudal warfare, heavy taxes levied by each feudal lord on goods transported across his domain, inadequate roads and bridges, and lack of money as a means of payment.

The decline of feudalism began in the 12th and 13th centuries, when the Crusades upset feudal ways of living. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the rise of strong national states hastened the end of feudalism as a system of government.

Starting about the 12th century, there was a gradual revival of trade because more settled conditions permitted persons and goods to move from place to place in safety, and the Crusades-European military expeditions to wrest control of Palestine, the Holy Land, from the Mohammedans, awakened European demand for the luxuries of the East. The revival of trade, in turn, stimulated the growth of towns. For trade purposes, towns are essential because they provide market places, storage and transportation facilities, and manufactured goods.

Medieval towns, at first under the control of nearby feudal lords, later freed themselves as they grew in wealth and population. Some towns purchased charters from their feudal rulers, thus gaining the right of self-government, a few towns won their independence by armed uprisings.

Out of the growth of trade and production that took place in medieval towns arose a new economic group of people, called the bourgeoisie. They were also known as the middle class, for those people were economically and socially in between the lowest (the serfs) and the highest (the nobles et clergy) of the feudal classes. The bourgeoisie consisted of merchants, shopkeepers, bankers, professional men, and other persons of wealth and enterprise.