首页
登录
职称英语
Economic Decline in Europe During the Fourteenth CenturyP1: Some very negative
Economic Decline in Europe During the Fourteenth CenturyP1: Some very negative
游客
2025-02-05
8
管理
问题
Economic Decline in Europe During the Fourteenth Century
P1: Some very negative factors accounted for the economic crisis in fourteenth-century Europe. With minimal human influence, the climate in Europe in the 1300s changed drastically, and the results were devastating. For seven years the weather turned abnormally cold and wet, triggering floods and ruining crops. There is substantial historical evidence for the Little Ice Age. The Baltic Sea froze over, as did many of the rivers and lakes in Europe. All of these indicate that during the fourteenth century, Europe’s average annual temperature declined approximately two degrees Celsius—this may sound like very little at first, but if one considers current projections about the possible effects of global warming, in which the average annual temperature shift is only one degree Celsius, a rather different impression emerges. As the temperature dropped, shortening the summer growing season and affecting the resilience of certain vegetable species, the wind and rain increased. During the coldest times, England’s growing season was shortened by one to two months compared to present day values.
The availability of varieties of seed today that can withstand extreme cold or warmth, wetness or dryness, was not available in the past. Therefore, climate changes had a much greater impact on agricultural output in the past.
P2: The next essential change occurred in the geopolitics of the Mediterranean world. The trade routes served principally to transfer raw materials, foodstuffs, and luxury goods from areas with surpluses to others where they were in short supply. The Byzantine trade was among the most advanced in Europe and the Mediterranean for many centuries. The decline of the Byzantine Empire, which had dominated the eastern Mediterranean, meant the interruption of trade routes to central and eastern Asia. The empire once operated as a prime hub in a trading network that at various times extended across nearly all of Eurasia and North Africa, in particular as the primary western terminus of the famous Silk Road. European interest in circumnavigating Africa and exploring westward into the Atlantic Ocean, in fact, originated in the desire to avoid the roadblock in the eastern Mediterranean and to tap directly into the trade with eastern Asia that had long sustained Europe’s economic growth.
P3: A more immediate cause of the ailing economy was an observable absence: since the eleventh century there had been few innovations in the agricultural technology. The groundwork for disaster was laid when populations exploded, as roughly the same farming methods as those adopted two hundred years prior were still in use, which brought a disruption in the food supply. With a much larger population to feed, there was little surplus left to generate fresh capital. Although the failure of agriculture to keep up with the growing population did not become a crisis until the fourteenth century, clear signs of the problem had already emerged by the middle of the thirteenth century, when occasionally low yields due to bad weather or social disruption revealed how perilous the balance between Europe’s population and its food supply had become. Farmlands most recently brought under cultivation during the economic crisis of the twelfth century witnessed the first evident tentativeness of the food supply. The less established farmers of these lands frequently did not have the ability to survive successive poor harvests. Tenant farmers unable to pay their rents were thus heavily in debt, and landlords who collected rents for their financial source tended to rely considerably on urban financiers for credit.
P4: The credit crisis afflicted almost all European countries and the most remarkable of which was England. The cycle of indebtedness was hardly inevitable, but the string of bank failures and commercial collapses in the first half of the fourteenth century was striking. The famed Bardi and Peruzzi banks of Florence (the two largest financial houses of Europe) collapsed spectacularly in the 1340’s. They were soon followed by the Riccardi bank of Lucca, whose massive loans had kept the English government afloat for years. Many more houses collapsed in turn.
P5: Farm expansion in Europe had come to an end by the year 1300. Much farm land fell into disuse, reducing the output of food.
Farm animals died, further diminishing the food supply. With all the deaths and drop in demand for food, the price of food dropped. In cities of Western Europe, with fewer people to work the demand for labor increased, as did wages. Consequently, large-scale migration of rural populations rushed into the cities. Europe’s overall population growth from 1050 to 1300 had been primarily due to an increase in the number of rural folk. Many cities doubled in size, and some even tripled, over the course of just one or two generations. Few were capable of absorbing such large numbers of people.
P3: ■ A more immediate cause of the ailing economy was an observable absence: since the eleventh century there had been few innovations in the agricultural technology. ■ The groundwork for disaster was laid when populations exploded, as roughly the same farming methods as those adopted two hundred years prior were still in use, which brought a disruption in the food supply. ■ With a much larger population to feed, there was little surplus left to generate fresh capital. ■ Although the failure of agriculture to keep up with the growing population did not become a crisis until the fourteenth century, clear signs of the problem had already emerged by the middle of the thirteenth century, when occasionally low yields due to bad weather or social disruption revealed how perilous the balance between Europe’s population and its food supply had become. Farmlands most recently brought under cultivation during the economic crisis of the twelfth century witnessed the first evident tentativeness of the food supply. The less established farmers of these lands frequently did not have the ability to survive successive poor harvests. Tenant farmers unable to pay their rents were thus heavily in debt, and landlords who collected rents for their financial source tended to rely considerably on urban financiers for credit. [br] In paragraph 1, all of the following are mentioned as factors that contributed to the decline of the agricultural economy in the fourteenth century EXCEPT
选项
A、an increase in rain and wind
B、a shortened growing season
C、the investment of capital in areas other than agriculture
D、a significant drop in temperature
答案
C
解析
【否定事实信息题】第7句提到随着气温的下降,夏季生长季节缩短了、某些蔬菜品种的回弹性受到影响、风和雨的数量也增加了,但是并未提到C选项中的资本投资。
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3943408.html
相关试题推荐
MassProduction:MethodandImpactP1:EvenwiththeearlysuccessesinEurope,
MassProduction:MethodandImpactP1:EvenwiththeearlysuccessesinEurope,
MassProduction:MethodandImpactP1:EvenwiththeearlysuccessesinEurope,
MassProduction:MethodandImpactP1:EvenwiththeearlysuccessesinEurope,
MassProduction:MethodandImpactP1:EvenwiththeearlysuccessesinEurope,
MassProduction:MethodandImpactP1:EvenwiththeearlysuccessesinEurope,
EconomicDeclineinEuropeDuringtheFourteenthCenturyP1:Someverynegative
EconomicDeclineinEuropeDuringtheFourteenthCenturyP1:Someverynegative
EconomicDeclineinEuropeDuringtheFourteenthCenturyP1:Someverynegative
EconomicDeclineinEuropeDuringtheFourteenthCenturyP1:Someverynegative
随机试题
Beforethe1500’s,thewesternplainsofNorthAmericaweredominatedbyfar
Eatingtoomuchfatcandistributetoheartdiseaseandcausehighbloodpressur
()是各国地铁施工的首选方法,在地面交通和环境允许的地方,通常采用该方法施
(2017年真题)甲上市公司2015年1月2日以2500万元取得乙公司(此前甲
男,7岁,数周来大便带鲜血,量少。血附于正常粪便之上。应首选的检查是()
在MMPI-2的附加量表中,自我力量的高分特征包括()。 (A)自我心
患者,男,56岁,平素体弱多病。1个月前,感气短,倦怠乏力多汗,食少便溏。辨证为
A.硫酸锌滴眼剂 B.酞丁安滴眼剂 C.庆大霉素滴眼剂 D.醋酸可的松滴眼
下列关于土地增值税优惠政策的说法中,正确的是()。A.纳税人建造普通标准住宅出
下列关于对焊法兰叙述正确的是()。A.法兰强度高 B.适用于温度波动幅度不大
最新回复
(
0
)