Page 256 - Encyclopedia Of World History

606 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his
production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper
commodity the more commodities he creates. • Karl Marx (1818–1883)

population lived in urban areas and the literacy rate was for the most part, because of its dependence upon or
only 30 percent . In her studies of Albania and Mon- exploitation by neighboring states, the economic devel-
tenegro from the early 1900s, the anthropologist M. E. opment of Eastern Europe was stunted. In the late
Durham observed patriarchal tribal societies, a justice sys- medieval period, landowning nobles in Poland and Hun-
tem based on blood vengeance, and cultural practices gary seized upon high profits to be gained in the export
that blended Islam and Catholicism with belief in vam- of grain and cattle to German and Italian markets. This
pires and the evil eye. export of foodstuffs resulted in the gradual transforma-
tion of the agrarian system from a tenant economy, in
Economic Development which peasants paid rent to the lords, to a feudal struc-
Eastern Europe offers a classic example of a peripheral ture that restricted peasant mobility and obliged them to
economic zone, a region that is dependent upon more work the lords’ estates. Thus, at the same time parts of
populous and developed areas—in this case, for the Western Europe transitioned from a feudal to a market-
export of raw materials and the import of capital and based economy, Eastern Europe experienced a “second
technology. Eastern Europe has been in a peripheral serfdom.” Economic power remained in the hands of the
relationship not only to the West European core, but also landed nobility, who invested their profits in manors and
to Constantinople/Istanbul and Moscow. At various luxury goods.
times, these imperial powers competed with each other Banking, industry, and commerce were limited in the
or with Western European states for control of the late medieval and early modern periods. Jews, Armeni-
region’s resources. In the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- ans, and Germans scattered in the region controlled
turies, the Ottoman Turks vied with Venice for silver and most commercial and industrial activities. During the
other resources in Bosnia and Serbia, leading to a series fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, caravans along the
of wars.The Ottomans were forced to surrender the agri- trade route between Akkerman on the Black Sea and
cultural areas of Ukraine and the Danube delta in wars L’viv/Lwów (Ukraine) were always under the direction of
with Russia in the 1700s. And imperial and Soviet Rus- Armenian merchants. Merchants in L’viv—whether
sia sought to offset Austrian and German influence in Armenian, Jewish, German, Tatar, Polish, or Italian—
Southeastern Europe and Poland in the nineteenth and traded wheat, fish, caviar, and cattle for pepper, cotton,
twentieth centuries. and silk. Slaves were also an important commodity:
A consequence of these overlapping economic interests between 1500 and 1650, some ten thousand slaves—
is that, from the later medieval period through the twen- seized in Poland, Ukraine, and southern Russia—were
tieth century, Eastern Europe’s natural resources have exported each year to Istanbul.
been extracted largely for the benefit of its neighbors to Lacking a prominent middle class and domestic mar-
the west, east, and south. After the Ottoman conquest of kets, Eastern Europe’s economy was slow to industrialize.
Constantinople in 1453, foodstuffs from Ukraine and By the late 1800s, isolated areas of industrialization had
metals from Bosnia and Serbia fueled the capital’s emerged: the Czech lands were an important manufac-
rebuilding. North of the Danube, the Austrian Habsburgs turing area in the Habsburg empire; the region around
and their German bankers gained control of the mineral Lodz, Poland, produced 40 percent of the Russian
resources of the Czech lands and Slovakia in the sixteenth empire’s coal and nearly a quarter of its steel; and
and seventeenth centuries. The word dollar is derived Budapest was one of the world’s largest centers for
from Joachimsthaler, a silver coin minted in present-day milling flour. For the most part, however, industrialization
Jachymov, Czech Republic, that the Habsburgs circulated was limited. In the 1930s, over 75 percent of GDP in
in the seventeenth century. This export of natural Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, and Yugoslavia
resources did generate some prosperity in the region. But, was agriculture; after Czechoslovakia, the largest indus-