Crusades and the Economic Effect on Italy
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Crusades and the Economic Effect on Italy
The crusades took place all around the Italian Peninsula which was a patchwork of three
main states called the Kingdom of Italy, the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Sicily which was its own island. The southern region of the Italian Peninsula was especially affected with many ships and people stopping there on the way to the Holy Land. The participation in the crusades would have a good impact on Italy’s economy by helping urban areas to grow dramatically . Also, the crusades had a positive impact on the Southern region of Italy’s economy by leading to a want for western and eastern goods that brought people from different cultures in contact and also spread colonies in key trading posts in the world.
One of the biggest impacts on the Italian region was the major boom in population of urban areas. Some evidence of this is that between 1000 CE and 1340 CE, Italy literally doubled in terms of population from five million people to ten million people. There were multiple reasons for this dramatic increase in population. A big reason was the import of goods from the west and the export of goods back. With the demand to export, more manufacturing towns would pop up all over areas where there was a lot of shipping. A great example of towns growing along these trade routes in Italy was Milan. Milan grew so much because it had a prime position between the port town of Venice and the Southern Region of France. Southern France had a reputation for being called, “The Merchant’s Doorway to Western Europe”. Also, it was not just the cities near ports that had a huge boom in population and economy. These cities had their boom was due to profiting from the rising price of goods coming to and from the various trading ports. The majority of this newfound population in all of these towns was mainly former serfs who were interested in the profit being found.
As for the spread of Italian colonies, this can be accredited to Italians taking part in the crusades. Before the crusades had started, there were only very small Italian colonies scattered in the Mediterranean comprised mainly of people from the merchant class. However, as the crusades had started to come to a close, there were Italian colonizations nearly everywhere in that part of Europe. The Italians would have colonies in the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire, and Western Europe. These various posts gave Italy power over exports and imports in those regions adding even more to the regions’ economy. However, no different to the events around them at the time, these colonies were not established very cleanly. To maintain them and to help with the exports, often times non-Christian people, typically Muslims were forced to work without compensation. These colonies, along with the help from these ‘laborers ’ would become so powerful that at one point in the thirteenth century, they actually controlled the trade in France. However, without the helps of Christian crusaders, these colonies may never have happened.
The crusades although created a gap in religion, helped to bring more people from different cultures