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South-east europe's divergence from the mainstream fo european development from thw eleventh century onwards

Articles

• Kaser, Karl

The object of the present survey is to investigate when and why the oncedominant south of Europe gave way and came to be dominated by the north,The question also arises of when the south-eastern part of the continent beganto lag behind the rest. The author broadly discusses the theories of FernandBraudel and Immanuel Wallerstein.The basic conclusion reached is that until the eleventh century, the ByzantineEmpire, which also sheltered south-eastern Europe, was in manyways the most developed area of the whole of Europe. The south-north divide,however, did not have a negative influence on the northern parts of the continent,because economic relations between the Byzantine Empire and northernEurope were not strong. International European and internal Byzantinedevelopments were the determining factors in the north’s gradual comingto supremacy. Venice, and later Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London, becamethe new centres of development, and while the Byzantine Empire was losingits position as a world power, the “European world economy” was cominginto being (Braudel, Wallerstein). Only the coastal regions of south-easternEurope were integrated into this new economic development, not the inlandareas, and south-eastern Europe was therefore left behind by the developingdominant Europe. The results of these different rates of development werenot evident until the sixteenth century, but the basic structures began to arisein the eleventh century.

• History and Archaeology

• Ιστορία, Αρχαία