Medieval PeopleJoin now to read essay Medieval PeopleMedieval PeopleBy Eileen PowerEileen Edna LePoer Power was born in Atrincham, Cheshire, England on January 9,1889. Power attended Girton College and the Sorbonne. She was described as “an unconventional woman for her time” one example of this is her open criticism of the foreign policy of Britain and active membership in the Union of Democratic Control (Berg). “Powers was Director of History at Girton College from 1913-21, Lecturer in Political Science at the London School of Economics 1921-24, and Reader of the University of London 1924-31, then returning to the London School of Economics as Professor of Economic History in 1931” (Berg). In 1927, Power founded the Economic History Review and in 1933 with, William Beveridge, started the Academic Freedom Committee that “helped academics fleeing for Nazi Germany” (Berg). In 1937, Power married a fellow historian Michael Postan and a year later became Professor of Economic History at Cambridge University. Mrs. Power, at the age of fifty-one, died of heart failure in 1940 leaving behind several books she wrote during her life and the legacy of a pioneering woman and leading historian of her time. A few more books, and a collection of her lectures, were published posthumously” (Berg).
The sources Power uses are as entertaining, interesting, and historically significant as the stories themselves. She went through the books and records, reading the intimate, romantic, and sometimes hard to read business letters and extensive wills left behind. This must have been at times engrossing and other times frustrating. The extensive research was very time consuming and an obvious labor of love. The objectivity in Powers stories is what makes her books considered, even still, academic and historical sources. Powers books, including this one, are widely regarded as “classics” (Berg).
“Social history sometimes suffers from the reproach that it is vague and general, unable to compete with the attractions of political history either for the student or for the general reader, because of its lack of outstanding personalities” (ix). I really do like history and I find this quote to be so true of the typical view of history. The main purpose of this book is to educate the general reader on the lives of the ordinary, everyday person that lived throughout the period called “medieval.” Showing that the stories of the common person, (regardless of sex, class, urban or rural) that lived through the more popularly written about history, are just as historically important, if not more at times, than that of the kings and queens written about.
Living under a monarch with a feudal system was harder on some and easier on others depending on your social class and whether you were female or male. Whether in Venice, England or the land of the Tartars you experienced feudalism. If you were a peasant, you were just a step above the serfs and worked just as hard. Peasants did more to work together and were more conscious about the survival of their families and friends. Noblemen in the upper classes were less involved with any real labor and worried more about what they could do for their social lives and standing in society. Most of the time, the basis of your social standing was determined by how much wealth you had and what trade you were in. Hierarchy among the church officials depended upon what position you held and what you did politically. However, regardless of this, they all had one thing in common and that was the love of socializing with family and friends.
Merchants were of higher social standing because of wealth made trading wool to clothiers all over the world. Clothiers, also merchants, made up most of the middle class and employed citizens of the lower class as well as keeping servants and slaves. Most of these high and middle class merchants lived in urban areas where their trade was concentrated. They developed these areas by building churches and creating employment opportunities within the communities. Wool was the trade that raised Englands power and wealth in the world. The clothiers supported the wool merchants, which in turn helped raise England to a better political standing among the world leaders and countries. During the medieval period in history, the political and religious rule shifted from Constantinople to Venice to England. This rule eventually shifted to a newly discovered America, when
[Page 2>From the 19th to the 19th century, the English colonies in Central America dominated the East Indies, where the Dutch, British, English and Spanish navies held the largest trading blocs, primarily of wool. The British settled from their settlement in the West Indies along the Western Atlantic to the Caribbean in the early 17th century. In the 20th century, they became the dominant colonies in New Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Malaysia, and later throughout Latin America.[Page 3]
[Page 4]
From 1824 until the advent of the English conquest of the East Indies, the English colonies grew from a small trading community between 1320 to 1828 with the exception of Portugal and Portugal-Bosnia, both of which had established their national governments in the 17th Century. Although most of the British landed, they had no monopoly on the trade beyond the English colonies.
[Page 5]
Throughout the colonial period, the major trade alliances between the English and the Native Americans was also maintained. The first important settlement in New England was that of New York. As late as 1906 and 1807, the U.S. became the only nation in the Western Hemisphere to enter the War of 1813 against Mexico. Although the United States was relatively new in colonial experience after all, the United States had never settled in a major trading center.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the French conquered much of America east of Louisiana, and the Indians continued to hold the territories west of Louisiana. The new states that had the greatest number of settlers in the entire Western Hemisphere, were New England, New Guinea, Indian Territory and California.
This large expansion of these colonies led to a population explosion. As the colonies grew, many large European trading capital cities and cities such as London began to enter New England. As this new settlement spread across the western hemisphere, the people of the Americas became even more integrated with the colonists. In Canada, the “white man” migrated from Canada to the Atlantic coast to escape the pressure from the Native Americans. During this migration many groups began migrating in large numbers to the islands and to the American continent. However, the most important immigrant group was the indigenous Indian. Many of the immigrants to many American cities and areas began to settle into the communities they lived in.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, the American Indian Movement began to become a global movement. Over time the national and international public opinion shifted in support for the Indian Movement, which was organized around one idea. During the 1820s and early 1900s, the Indian movement gained a foothold in the West through groups such as the British Indian Society.[Page 6] An early example of such a movement occurred in the early 1830s in the Colonies and the Plains and in California during the early 1820s. In spite of the movement’s growing isolation from the colonial government, some U.S. citizens still attended the meetings and helped make the movement a success. A large number of Indians remained in South Asia and in the Pacific after independence in 1910.[Page 7]
By 1830, it seemed plausible that the Indian people who came to the United States to buy new land in the South American Basin, or South America, could become the new farmers and craftsmen in this newly discovered region.
The rise of agriculture is generally accepted throughout the world of America. This theory of the Indian Revolution seems to have originated in the early 19th century when