THE COMMERCIAL CHARACTER OF THE WESTERN CITIES OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

Abstract

This article makes a brief historiographical analysis of the economic character of the main medieval cities, "resurrected" between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries in Western Europe. Initially, we discuss an old debate among historians that deals with the divergences related to the motivation that led to the "reappearance" of urban life in the period called the "Late Middle Ages". Were these urban agglomerations the result of the expansion of the old burghs, the continuity of the old episcopal cities, or the result of the expansion and intensification of the commercial relations developed by the new "class" of rich men, the merchants, in the old world? We seek to understand in what aspects these new urban agglomerations differed from the old cities of the West, especially in the economic and social fields. In the end, we address the main changes that took place in the mentalities of medieval society regarding the way of thinking about their social relations, with emphasis on the influence caused by the practical transformations that occurred in the productive and commercial base in the final phase of the Middle Ages and the effect of this on the process of reformulation of the new social concepts.