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From the 6th to 10th centuries, there were few commerce centers and only small merchant classes in Europe. What long-distance trade there was usually focussed on luxury goods for the nobility and church elites, and was mediated by traveling merchants such as Syrians or Jews. Crafts were carried on locally in manors. Populations were not large enough to support further economic developments, and Viking and Arab attacks made trade routes hazardous.
During the High Middle Ages of 1000-1500, long distance trading became safer and thus more profitable. As a result, craftsmen moved into growing centers of trade, forcing lords and serfs to have to get their goods from these centers of trade. Towns formed leagues and urban federations, or communes, that worked together to fight crime or deal with monarchs and nobles. Guilds also arose, allowing for the collective supervision of affairs - the work was done by reliable people, and the guilds provided for vocational education. The spirit of the medieval economy, however, was to prevent competition.
The rise of towns had an emancipating effect. They forced the lords to offer freer terms to the peasantry. Often, peasants earned freedom in return for an annual payment to the lord. Allowing large numbers of people to move from agricultural to industrial work in the towns brought economic acceleration. Indeed, a sort of handicraft industrial revolution took place during the 12th and 13th centuries, especially in the Low Countries where great cloth-making centers such as Ghent and Bruges accumulated much wealth and stimulated growth in Western Europe generally. The Hansa, a widespread league of North Sea, Norwegian and Baltic trading towns, emerged in this period, opening up Scandinavian resources to supply Western Europe with furs, timber, beeswax, and fish.
The High Middle Ages also saw Europeans returning from Crusades in the Middle East, where they had developed tastes for goods not produced at home. These homecomings introduced medieval Europeans to exotic spices, silks, fruits, drugs, and other eastern products for the first time. Cities around the Mediterranean took part in the trade that developed, with Venice becoming the richest port of entry for Asian goods, the base from which Marco Polo and his companions set forth on their journey to China.
