Decline or Growth?

European Towns and Rural Economies, 1300–1600

Abstract

The paper discusses the three following subjects: first, the trend of European urbanisation from 1300 until 1600 (reassessing the existing literature on the topic); second, the immediate causes of this trend (on the basis of town-country differentials in labour productivity and wages); third, a model explaining this reconstructed trend on the basis of rural-urban interaction. The conclusion addresses the advantages and disadvantages of the macro and micro approaches to the history of towns in the late medieval to early modern periods.