6 - The new business environment of the Middle Ages

Summary

In contemporary understanding, business is often linked to entrepreneurship – the quality of acting as a go-between or agent matching supply and demand. The word “entrepreneur” was borrowed from the French in the fifteenth century to describe a military commander leading troops into battle; only gradually was its meaning extended to the battlefield of business. But the military image is an apt one, for businessmen of any age seek to command forces that are not of their own making, under conditions they cannot choose, with outcomes they cannot foresee. Of course, good businessmen, like good generals, seek to reduce the level of uncertainty, and we have seen that in the fourteenth century they were fully challenged in this regard. Many business enterprises, including the mighty super-companies, were unable to cope with the unprecedented changes in the natural and human world and disappeared. Others, using many of the same business techniques, adjusted to change, turned it to their advantage and prospered. Given such diverse challenges and enigmatic outcomes, we have divided our discussion, treating the many changes to the business environment in this chapter and leaving the effects of these changes and business's adaptations to them for the following chapter.

EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

We have seen in Chapter 1 that agriculture was fundamental in medieval society and economy to a much greater degree than in the modern world. The very fact that in today's developed economies only 2 to 6 percent of people are farmers, while in the Middle Ages roughly the same percentages were not farmers, gives some idea of the magnitude of the difference.