Economic and Social History of Europe in the Later Middle Ages (1300-1530)

Book excerpt: France under Philip the Fair (1285-1314) and the last Capetians (1314-1328) -- Background of the hundred years' war. Wool and wine. The conflict between France and England over the cloth trade of Flanders and wine production in Gascony -- First period of the Hundred Years' War (1337-1380) -- Town leagues in Germany -- The Hanseatic league -- The Teutonic Knights in Prussia and the Baltic lands -- The commerce and industry of southern Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- Eastern Europe- Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Wallachia and Moldavia -- Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- The Florentine woollen industry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- The fiscal and economic policy of the papacy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- Second period of the Hundred Years' War (1380-1453) -- Flanders under the dukes of Burgundy (1369-1477) -- Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries -- The Balkan peninsula, Greece and the Levant -- The black death --The gilds and the formation of the patriciate in the towns. The proletariate and the conflict of classes -- Banking during the renaissance -- The origin of modern business methods -- France at the end of the middle ages (1461-1515) -- Germany, Italy and Spain at the end of the middle ages -- On the threshold of modern times.