Социальная история Англии XIV-XVII вв.

metal working, and tanning. For example, the majority of Bristol dyers worked for a small number of guild members who were engaged only in cloth exporting.

Emergence of new forms of production in the 14^th — 15^th centuries was not connected with the decay of the guild system. For a long time they co-existed in many branches of industry.

It is necessary to note that new developments were characteristic both for towns and villages. Early capitalist production in the village was set up due to accumulation of capital by town manufacturers who organized and controlled not only town production but also country craftsmen.

Bristol’s history evidences that early capitalism in Italian towns of the 14^th century was not a unique phenomenon. That age was the time when similar processes in economy took place in different European countries. New capitalist forms of production occurred in the textile industry of England, the Netherlands, and Germany. In the 15^th century other branches, such as mining, book printing, soap and sugar manufacture, joined this process. Though in England early capitalist relations were developing more slowly than, for example, in Italy, they proved to be more viable due to early economic consolidation and political centralization of the country, and more balanced development of urban and rural economies. Relations between the town and its countryside were closer in England which brought to a quicker formation of domestic market than in the countries of continental Europe.

The fact that there was a port in the town favoured successful development of crafts in it. Overseas trade appeared to be the most important factor of production growth as it provided a wide trading area. English merchants all the more tried to drive foreign merchants out of the market which could be especially well seen in London, Bristol, and Southampton. The character of external trade started to change as well. For example, Bristol was one of the first English towns which began to export fabricated production instead of wool. As wool had never been an important export item, there were no essential differences between Bristol’s Merchant Staplers and Merchant Adventurers; belonging to the Merchants of the Staple gave to their members, first of all, legal advantages.

Until the end of the 13^th century the main trade turnover took place inside the country at fairs. But by the 14^th century their importance had fallen as towns themselves became permanent trade areas. In the 14^th — 15^th centuries intraurban trade was notable for its significant volume and complexity. At that time trade in various goods was carried out by separate guilds — of fishmongers, cloth dealers, mercers and others — which were established instead of Trade Guild that once united all rightful townspeople. Appearance of the position of a broker is an evidence of increased and complicated trade and financial operations at the market. The sources also show that wholesalers were trying to subordinate small retail trade.

Having united many English counties by trade ties, such towns as London and Bristol began to play a very significant role in forming the national market because before the 14^th — 15^th centuries domestic trade was to a great extent regional, arranged within narrow borders. There were rather favourable conditions for establishing such a market in England: early centralization of the country, a relative balance between the development of agriculture, industry and trade, and existence of a single economic centre. By the end of the 15^th century, as the main part of overseas trade was concentrated in London, the role of Bristol in domestic trade had fallen because it was closely connected with its export and import. A new rise of Bristol as a regional capital in the West of England begins from the time of entering into permanent relations with North-American colonies.

In the 14^th –17^th centuries essential changes took place in the social sphere too. Rapid growth of industry and trade put forward the richest and most enterprising people. We can see that sometimes a merchant and a production organizer were one and the same person. Documents show how the two ways of capitalist entrepreneurs’ emergence were interwoven: not only a merchant became a manufacturer but, in its turn, a producer transformed into a merchant. Developments in social relations could be seen in the changes of the character of patriciate. There appeared “new” patricians who were closely connected with entrepreneurial activity and strove to drive old patriciate out of town governing.

Processes that took place in craft guilds show that expropriation of the immediate producer and the formation of the wage labour market in the town had begun long before mass peasants’ dispossession of land in the 16^th century. Complaints of guilds’ craftsmen that they were being ruined, turning into tramps and paupers show that there was a deep stratification inside the guild already in the 14^th century. It seems that enclosures in the English village of the 16^th century were connected not so much with the development of Flanders’ manufactory as with the establishment of new forms of cloth production in England itself, all the more so as in the end of the 14^th century it was forbidden to export unfinished cloth. Domination of cloth export over wool export by the middle of the 15^th century proves that there was the growth of demand for raw materials in England and this was the reason that caused mass enclosures since the end of the 15^th century.

Rapid development of entrepreneurship could not but affect social psychology of medieval townspeople. Especially clearly it was manifested in towns with wide international links. Merchants and craftsmen meeting people from other countries learned to perceive themselves not only as citizens of a town (they had never forgot about that) but as English people as opposed to foreigners. With the expansion of trade and production, their confidence and pride for their achievements were also growing. This was expressed in building stone houses, in their wish to keep up with feudal lords in the luxury of their clothing, in pompous tombstone and so on.

At the given period the ideas about a social position of the woman began to change. Their participation in external trade activity, financial operations and disposal of inheritance shows the growth of their economic and legal independence. Certainly, we cannot compare the burghership of a small town somewhere in the hinterland and a big port like London, Bristol or Southampton. Property and social stratification, naturally, took place quicker in such urban communities where big capital was involved into trade.

At the end of the period under review, a small country, England, was becoming, first, the centre of world maritime trade and then the centre of the empire.