Europeans slowly began to emancipate themselves towards external territories. Thanks to the Crusades, they were now able to travel confidently both on land and at sea. The map of trade routes in the Middle Ages shows that large trade affected all of Europe:
In the north, a powerful association of Germanic and Scandinavian cities, the Hanseatic League, exercised a real monopoly in the North Sea and the Baltic.
To the south, the port cities of Genoa, Amalfi, and Venice in Italy dominated Mediterranean trade. These cities benefited from the consequences of the Crusades, which made a powerful contribution to reactivating trade with the ports of the Levant.
In addition, caravan tracks and sea routes joined India, Southeast Asia, and China. Products from these regions were purchased by Europeans in the cities of the Levant or Byzantium. In exchange, they sold wood, iron, wheat, wine, oil, etc.
Technical innovations
Among the causes of the rise of medieval trade are some technical progress in the field of means of transport. For land transport, there are the advances of shoeing, harnessing and horse-drawn carriage. These innovations were completed by the iron strapping of cart and tank wheels and the increase in paved roads. Other improvements came later: in the 14th century, the straps hanging the cart bodies and the limbers rotating around an axle appeared.
The Roman network
From Rome, as a "nerve centre", many roads and pavements radiated along routes that could reach any point in the Empire, including the farthest, and along which travelers could benefit from a remarkable system of horse relays and inns for rest. When the Roman Empire fell, the change that took place, while not abrupt, followed a slow process of deterioration and abandonment that lasted for more than two centuries. Concretely, from the reign of Emperor Caracalla until the third century AD, Rome had ceased to be concerned with the maintenance of the secondary road network; only the main roads leaving Rome benefited from these vital tasks, the relays were functioning, and the inns, although becoming scarce, remained open. The immense network of communication routes developed by the Romans, one of the most colossal works of civil engineering of all time, was, unfortunately, to disappear with the collapse of the Empire.
Invasion routes
In the 7th century AD, the major Roman roads, already severely deteriorated, nevertheless remained the best and most frequent means of communication of the time. These were the Roman roads that many barbarian tribes first used to invade the Empire from the 4th century onwards, with their heavy wagons pulled by oxen, cattle and slaves, not to mention women, children and formidable warriors on horseback. According to the chronicles of the time, in Europe and in the first half of the 8th century, these roads or what remained of them were abandoned in favor of strictly vicinal roads. Cities, towns, cities and entire villages were experiencing mass desertification. This period coincides with the beginning of feudalism.
The Little Renaissance
In the second half of the 8th century on the Old Continent, there was a renewal of commercial, intellectual and religious activity initiated by the Emperor Charlemagne, a dominant personality of the Early Middle Ages (the period from the beginning of the 5th century until the dawn of the 12th century). The Carolingian Empire, maintained by Charlemagne's successors, was to last almost a century and a half, during which it underwent an authentic renaissance that took hold in the first half of the 9th century. Europe's roads during these long periods were once again used. But the ancient Roman roads were over; time had done its work on the one hand, and after the successful passage of the barbarians and peasants, they had been ransacked and looted, because the material from which these roads were made, blocks of stone of excellent quality had proved to be of great use for the construction of houses. Many manor houses were built from stone extracted from Roman roads. All these reasons left little of the wide roads that once crossed mountains and rivers on ingenious bridges, most of which were destroyed. The roads and paths of the Carolingian Empire, while inspired by the Roman road, were much more modest.
to be continued in the next part