With no trade, the economic importance of port cities on the Mediterranean went away, and the economic center of gravity shifted to the north, to the Carolingian empire and later the predominantly German Holy Roman Empire. Economic production became confined to goods for local consumption. With no trade, manufacturing too suffered and cities were denuded of their population. The real crisis occurred when Islam took over the periphery of Europe, and encroached into that continent itself, shutting off access to Asia and Africa. Cities such as Marseilles continued to function pretty much as they had during Roman times, as ports of entry for eastern merchandise as well as independent manufacturing and administrative centers. Pirenne argues that the barbarian take-over of the Roman empire did not immediately result in a decline of civilization because the tribes adopted Roman ways and continued the Roman economic and political systems.
In this book, Pirenne traces the decline of (European) cities as a result of this crisis, and their revival in the 11th and 12th centuries due to the reopening of the ancient trade routes. Pirenne analiza tambien la transformacion del concepto de riqueza (al dejar de ser sinonimo de propiedad de la tierra) y sobre todo el papel de la ciudad en el ambito intelectual al expandir mas alla del clero el acceso a la cultura y la ciencia.Ī little gem of a book, that presents what has been elsewhere called the "Pirenne thesis" - that the Dark Ages descended on Europe not with the Ostrogoths' capture of Rome in the 5th century, but with the rise of Islam in Spain and West Asia in the eighth. A partir del siglo X las rutas comerciales fueron revitalizandose con nuevas corrientes de civilizacion que se establecieron en los nucleos urbanos supervivientes marcando este renacimiento el comienzo de una nueva era: frente al clero y la nobleza la burguesia inicia su ascenso que culminara en la epoca contemporanea. En Las ciudades de la Edad Media Pirenne demuestra que fue la expansion musulmana -que cerro el Mediterraneo al trafico comercial durante el siglo VIII- y no las invasiones germanicas lo que disloco la unidad economica creada por el imperio romano dando origen al periodo de decadencia comercial que tan graves consecuencias tendria para la vida urbana.
Aunque el transcurso de los anos haya modificado parcialmente algunas de sus conclusiones las investigaciones de Henri Pirenne sobre la Edad Media continuan siendo una referencia indispensable para los historiadores actuales.
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