Commercial Revolution

The Commercial Revolution was a period of European economic expansion, colonialism, and mercantilism which lasted from approximately the late 13th century until the early 18th century. It was succeeded in the mid-18th century by the Industrial Revolution. Beginning with the Crusades, Europeans rediscovered spices, silks, and other commodities rare in Europe. This development created a new desire for trade, and trade expanded in the second half of the Middle Ages. Newly forming European states, through voyages of discovery, were looking for alternative trade routes in the 15th and 16th centuries, which allowed the European powers to build vast, new international trade networks. Nations also sought and found new sources of wealth. The Commercial Revolution is marked by an increase in general commerce, and in the growth of financial services such as banking, insurance, and investing.

The term itself was coined in the middle of the 20th century, by economic historian Roberto Sabatino Lopez, to shift focus away from the English Industrial Revolution. In his best-known book, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages (1971, with numerous reprints), Lopez argued that the key contribution of the medieval period to European history was the creation of a commercial economy, centered at first in the Italo-Byzantine eastern Mediterranean, but eventually extending to the Italian city-states and over the rest of Europe.

The Commercial Revolution ran from approximately the late 13th century through the 18th century, with Walt Whitman Rostow saying the beginning is "arbitrarily" 1488, the year the first European sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. Most historians, including scholars such as Angeliki Laiou, Robert S. Lopez, Irving W. Raymond, and Peter Spufford indicate that there was a commercial revolution of the 12th-13th centuries, or that it began at this point, rather than later.

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