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Renaissance Europe: Role of the Mediterranean

Article · October 2021

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Aparna Joshi

Renaissance Europe

06 October 2021

The Mediterranean: A Region in transition

The Mediterranean has been an area of cultural exchange and trade since the ancient period. As
suggested by historians such as Romila Thapar and Nayanjyot Lahiri, Indo-Roman trade was the
building block of international commerce routes later known as the silk and spice routes. In what
scholars term the middle Ages, various historians such as Henri Pirenne suggest that trade
declined due to the rise of Feudalism, thus Europe sunk into itself. Historian Marc Bloch saw this
as an outcome of Feudalism, the bonds of economic relations between subjects and the king,
rather than as a purely economic institution. The region of the Mediterranean flourished not only
due to the rise of the Renaissance or the rebirth of classical ideology and the rise of rational
humanism.

But also, due to the shared culture of exploration and travel. It was in the Mediterranean, that
Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, promoted travel and discovery of new lands
including the Americas and India, extended trade routes with these new lands and thus opened
the door to imperial expansion and colonisation in the following period. other than travel,
another important unifying factor was the emergence of banking towns throughout the
Mediterranean such as Florence, Venice, Barcelona and Lisbon. These towns flourished due to
the control of powerful banking networks and continued to trade with foreign and new lands.
Another important factor regarding the Mediterranean was the shared experience of the Papal
States and the overarching control of Catholicism in the region.

Further, after the decline of the high renaissance, none of the regions in the Mediterranean
experienced the process of industrialisation, mechanisation of production relations similar to
England and the Atlantic sea route. The region of the Mediterranean though did not completely
disappear from the global map, it experienced a decline due to the contrast in production
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relations. It was only in the later 19th and 20th centuries that the Mediterranean region was in the
annals of history again with the rise of fascism and communism in the region. Further, this was
also the time of European unification and the rise of nation-state identities.

CONCLUSION

A steep transition took place from feudalism to capitalism in the region of the Mediterranean,

thus leading to the transition of importance and influence from the -.Roman port from the times

of antiquity to the ports of Early modern Europe inNorthern Italy and the Atlantic Ocean. The

period of the Renaissance and the iberian Peninsula also saw the rise of early imperialism and

slavery due to colonisation. The expansion of these ideas, led to the rise of industrialisation in

Nothern Europe. Leading to the birth of Early Modern Europe and in the words of Burckhardt,

the Italians were the first born of the sons of Early Modern Europe. This statement however was

contested subsequently, by a number of historians. It shall also form the basis of further

discussion on this topic in the modernist and post modernist understanding, with the inclusion of

diversity.
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Works Cited

Phukan, Meenaxi. Rise of Modern West, 2015. Print.

Sinha, Arvind Europe in Transition. New Delhi, 2021. Print.

Thapar, Romila. Black Gold, 1998. Print.

Weber Max, The Protestant Ethic of Capitalism, Print

Lockyer Roger, Tudor and Stuart Britain, Print

Bloch Marc, Feudal Society Vol I, Print

Pirenne Henri, Origin of Towns, Print

Hilton Rodney, The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, Print

Heller Henry Birth of Capitalism, Print

Holton RH, Theories of Transition to Capitalism, Print