inion, have, without sufficient care, used for their
picture of the city economy of the Middle Ages the characteristics of
the German towns and more particularly the German towns of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Now the great majority of the German
towns of that period were far from having attained the degree of
development which had been reached by the great communes of northern
Italy, of Tuscany, or of the Low Countries. Instead of presenting the
classical type of urban economy, they are merely examples of it
incompletely developed; they present only certain manifestations; they
lack others, and particularly those which belong to the domain of
capitalism. Therefore in presenting as true of all the cities of the
Middle Ages a theory which rests only on the observation of certain of
them, and those the least advanced, one is necessarily doing violence to
reality. Buecher's description of _Stadtwirtschaft_ remains a masterpiece
of penetration and economic understanding. But it is too restricted. It
does not take account of certain elements of the problem, because these
elements were not encountered in the narrow circle which the research
covered. One may be confident that if, instead of proceeding from the
analysis of such towns as Frankfort, this study had considered
Florence, Genoa, and Venice, or even Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Douai, or
Tournai, the picture which it furnished us would have been very
different. Instead of refusing to see capitalism of any kind in the
economic life of the bourgeoisie, the author would have recognized, on
the contrary, unmistakable evidences of capitalism. I shall later have
occasion to return to this very essential question. But it was
indispensable to indicate here the position which I shall take in regard
to it.

Of course I do not at all intend to reject _en bloc_ the ideas generally
agreed upon concerning the urban economy of the Middle Ages. On the
contrary, I believe them to be entirely accurate in their essential
elements, and I am persuaded that, in a very large number of cases, I
will even say, if you like, in the majority of cases, they provide us
with a theory which is completely satisfactory. I am very far from
maintaining that capitalism exercised a preponderant influence on the
character of economic organization from the twelfth to the fifteenth
centuries. I believe that, though it is not right to call this
organization "acapitalistic", it is on the other hand correc