Wylie Period 1 Team 1

Ashley Chang, Diana Kim, Jenny Yu, Justin Park

During the Medieval era, the merchants emerged as a new class of people. The rapid growth of merchants and trades was significant. Town populations tied with the growth of trades. The merchants became the ones who held higher power in the towns. They were the elite of towns because the towns were built on trade. The Merchant guides, organizations for merchants formed in the 10^th century for mutual protections, controlled the town governments. The guilds set up standard for their professions and provided protection to their members’ interests. On the other hand, the Craft guilds, a group of tradesman that joined together, became a new class with higher social status. People can achieve higher social status by joining the membership. Masters, journeyman, and apprentices are the three different levels of craftsman. Craft guilds controlled conditions, working hours, and quality of their members. Also, Craft guilds protected their members from outside competitions, ensured fair competition, and maintained the quality of the members. Craft guilds were extremely powerful that it became really hard to practice a trade without joining the appropriate guilds. Merchants and tradesman supported a strong central government – the king – for the stability of trade. On the other hand, the king also supported the growth of trade and towns because the trades became a major source of royal revenue. Therefore, the social status of the merchants and tradesman became higher and higher and eventually contributed to the development of a feudalism society. The manuscript of the Life of St. Denis shows the shift to the trade-based society and the activity of the merchants and tradesman. The image of a wagon with passengers illustrates the importance of travel between towns during this era.