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The big idea: The medieval economy rested on one thing above all: the land. Around nine in ten people were peasants who grew food.
So before we talk about silk and spices crossing continents, remember that everything started in the fields of a manor — the local farming estate where most people lived and worked.
A manor was the basic economic unit of the medieval countryside. A lord owned it, and peasants farmed it in return for a share of what they grew and their own labour.
Part of the land was the lord's private field, called the demesne. The rest was split among the peasant families to feed themselves.
The open-field system
Instead of separate farms, the land was one huge shared area split into thin strips. Each family held scattered strips, so good and bad soil was shared out fairly.
Crop rotation
Fields were divided into two or three parts. One part rested (lay fallow) each year to recover, while the others grew grain or beans. This kept the soil from wearing out.
The demesne
The lord kept his own strip of land, the demesne. Peasants had to work it for free on certain days — a duty called labour service — before tending their own strips.
Open fields · rotate the crops · owe labour on the demesne.
This was a system of subsistence farming: most peasants grew mainly enough to live on.
But a good harvest left a little extra — a surplus — and that small surplus is where trade begins.
Spot it: the manorial trio: Three words unlock the whole manorial economy: open fields, crop rotation and the demesne. If you can explain those three, you can explain how ordinary people fed medieval society.
Once a peasant family had a surplus, they wanted to exchange it — for a pot, some salt, or coins to pay their rent.
So trade grew in two layers: local trade close to home, and long-distance trade stretching across the world.
Local trade: markets and fairs: Most towns held a weekly market where villagers sold grain, eggs and animals and bought what they could not make.
Bigger, rarer events were fairs — held once or twice a year, lasting days, and pulling in merchants from distant regions. The fairs of Champagne in France became famous hubs where northern and southern Europe met.
Long-distance trade was a different world. It carried luxuries that were light, valuable and did not spoil — worth the huge cost and danger of moving them thousands of miles.
Four great networks tied the medieval world together.
- The Silk Road — overland caravan routes linking China to the Middle East and Europe, carrying silk, spices and ideas across Central Asia.
- The Indian Ocean network — a web of sea routes joining East Africa, Arabia, India and Southeast Asia, powered by seasonal monsoon winds.
- Mediterranean trade — the sea highway where Italian merchants shipped Eastern luxuries into Europe and carried European goods out.
- Baltic and North Sea trade — the northern circuit dealing in bulkier goods like grain, timber, fish and furs.
A journey of pepper: A sack of pepper might be grown in India, carried by monsoon ship across the Indian Ocean to Egypt, hauled overland to the coast, shipped across the Mediterranean by Venetian traders, then sold at a fair in France — passing through a dozen hands and multiplying in price at every stop.
Local vs long-distance: Examiners love the contrast between everyday local trade (food, close to home, cheap and bulky) and long-distance luxury trade (spices and silk, far away, costly and light). Knowing why they differ shows real understanding, not just memorised lists.
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Trade meant nothing without goods to move and powerful players to move them.
Let's look at what was traded, who grew rich doing it, and why it changed the world.
| Good | Where from | Why prized |
|---|---|---|
| Spices | India, Southeast Asia | Flavoured and preserved food; a status symbol |
| Silk | China | Light, luxurious cloth only the East could make |
| Textiles | Flanders, Italy | Fine woollen and linen cloth Europe sold back east |
| Grain | Baltic, Sicily | Bulk food to feed growing towns |
| Furs | Russia, Scandinavia | Warmth and luxury for northern winters |
| Precious metals | Africa, Central Europe | Gold and silver used as money itself |
| Slaves | Eastern Europe, Africa | Forced labour, traded as human property |
Don't sanitise the slave trade: The medieval economy included a brutal trade in enslaved people, moved along the same routes as silk and furs. IB rewards honesty about this — treat it as a real and shameful part of the system, not a footnote.
Italian city-states — Venice and Genoa
These merchant republics dominated Mediterranean trade. Venice controlled the spice route through Egypt, while Genoa reached into the Black Sea. Their ships and banks made them the richest cities in Europe.
The Hanseatic League
An alliance of northern German trading towns (like Lübeck and Hamburg) that ran Baltic and North Sea trade in grain, timber, fish and furs. Together they controlled markets from London to Russia.
Baghdad and the Islamic ports
Baghdad sat at the crossroads of the Silk Road and Indian Ocean, a hub of trade, banking and learning. Islamic ports like Basra and Cairo linked Asia to the Mediterranean, making the Islamic world the great middleman of medieval commerce.
Why it all mattered: These routes stitched Europe, the Islamic world and Asia into one vast economy.
Goods, gold, technology and ideas flowed along them — and the wealth they created built cities, funded rulers, and shaped the balance of power for centuries.
What flowed EAST (from Europe)
- Fine woollen and linen textiles
- Silver and gold coin
- Timber, furs and amber from the north
- Enslaved people from Eastern Europe
What flowed WEST (into Europe)
- Spices from India and Southeast Asia
- Silk and porcelain from China
- Sugar, dyes and glassware
- Knowledge — maths, medicine and navigation