The Children of Eve by Louis P. Cain & Donald G. Paterson

Author:Louis P. Cain & Donald G. Paterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-11-25T05:00:00+00:00

6.4 The Rural-Urban Shift

In the pre-modern world most people lived and worked in rural areas either on farms or the villages that serviced them. In medieval Europe, commerce was viewed as a pleasant interruption of normal life in the form of the weekly market and occasional market fairs. The market towns expanded in number and increased in size with more and more regular trade. They also grew as military, ecclesiastical and administrative centers coalesced with the commercial needs. Winchester in Southern England is a prime medieval example of a commercial center (the grain trade), administrative capital and a principal bishopric, all benefiting from the cost saving of agglomeration. Such towns sucked labor out of the rural work force. Periods of vigorous coastal and overseas trade expansion also witnessed the growth of urban ports as trans-shipment points and rudimentary financial centers, as in the woolen trades of the 14th century. Notably the Low Countries and England had the highest rates of early urbanization in Northwestern Europe with their great port cities of Amsterdam and London.

Figure 6.2 Periods of Rapid Urbanization, England and Wales and the United States, 1750–2000.

Source: data from the US Census and Grigg, 1980.

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