Medieval Prosperity and Growth, 1000-1300.

For centuries before Christopher Columbus's famous 1492 voyage, Europeans were already gaining greater knowledge of the world around them. Beginning around the year 1000 Europe experienced what historians have labeled a commercial revolution of the High Middle Ages—a period of remarkable and unprecedented growth in economy and population. Large cities, mostly absent from the European landscape since the dissolution of the western Roman empire in the fifth century, reappeared and were connected to one another by everexpanding networks of roads and commerce. Part of the impetus for Europe's dramatic economic expansion in this era came from long-distance trade that brought to Europe's markets the consumer products of Asia. Fueled in large measure by contacts established during the Christian crusades against the Muslim-dominated Holy Land beginning in 1081, Europeans of means developed a taste for spices, silk...