A world without business is as unimaginable in our fin de siècle age as one without light or air. Moreover, “doing business” has come to be an activity that bridges night and day, land and sea, and even airless space. Business is now all-embracing and, as it seems to some, all-consuming. This was not always so, and one of the purposes of this book is to trace the early history of what has become arguably the most powerful revolutionary force that Europe has unleashed on the rest of the world. But as Karl Marx, an early student of the historical implications of European business, has remarked, the revolution was not created “from whole cloth” but from materials found in the historical context of the period covered by this book.

The dynamics of the process of creation will be the particular focus of this introductory chapter. The reader may have already noticed that the authors believe the driving force for change in the medieval economy was created by the demands of the wealthy and powerful, the seigneurs of northwestern Europe.