WHEN TIRON WAS founded the French nation did not exist. The Capetian kings of the Franks were based in Paris and controlled the limited territory of Ile-de-France and the royal principality (under direct royal rule). To the north, the Seine Valley was controlled in the Vexin by the count of Meulan and therefrom to the Atlantic by the king of England who was also duke of Normandy. In the Loire Valley to the west the territory was controlled by the counts of Blois and Anjou/ Maine, and the duke of Brittany, and to the south from Poitou to the Auvergne by the duke of Aquitaine and the seigneur of Beaujeu. To the east, the territory was controlled by the count of Champagne and the duke of Burgundy. Through marriage and warfare over the course of the twelfth-and thirteenth-centuries, these regions were incorporated into the nation of modern France ruled from Paris. Henry II's accession in 1154 brought England, Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine, and Poitou under Plantagenet rule, and the king won political control of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Brittany. These nations and regions comprised a centralized economic region later known as the Angevin trading zone, which Judith Everard and John Gillingham have recently studied. Nonetheless, these French regions and the Angevin Empire were incorporated earlier in the form of the network of foundations established by Abbots Bernard and William of Tiron.

The Tironensians expanded into these regions and participated in their economies. Landed wealth prevailed before the rise of towns, and landholders were expert agronomists acutely aware of the earning potential of their properties. The Tironensian holdings provided wheat, grapes, vegetables, fruit, livestock, fish, saltworks, forest products, and iron, with regional variations. Wheat prevailed in their central core of properties but extended elsewhere into Normandy and Champagne. Normandy and Brittany provided salt, fish and shellfish, dairy products, and cider. Anjou, southern France, and eastern Champagne were noted for wine. Fruits and vegetables flourished in the south but were grown elsewhere too. Depending upon availability, smiths processed metal deposits, masons processed local stone, carpenters processed forest products, and textile workers processed animal hides and wool throughout their holdings.