Beginning in the 1160s, the opening of new silver mines in northern Europe led to the minting and circulation of vast quantities of silver coins.
- minting 铸币
- circulation 流通
The widespread use of cash greatly increased the volume of international trade. Business procedures changed radically. The individual traveling merchant who alone handled virtually all aspects of exchange evolved into an operation involving three separate types of merchants: the sedentary merchant who ran the "home office" financing and organizing the firm's entire export-import trade; the carriers who transported goods by land and sea; and the company agents resident in cities abroad who, on the advice of the home office, looked after sales and procurements.
- cash 现金
- radically 根本上地
- virtually 几乎
- operation 企业;公司
- sedentary 坐着的
- land and sea 海陆
- home office 总部
- look after 照顾;主管
- procurement 采购
Commercial correspondence, unnecessary when one businessperson oversaw everything and made direct bargains with buyers and sellers, multiplied.
当一个商人可以监督商业运作所有事项时，商业信函就不需要了。但当一个商人可以直接和买卖双方交易时，商业信函的使用又会大幅增加。
- correspondence 信函;信件
- oversee 监督
- bargain 交易;商谈
- multiply 增加
Regular courier service among commercial cities began. Commercial accounting became more complex when firms had to deal with shareholders, manufacturers, customers, branch offices, employees, and competing firms.
- regular 定期的;固定的
- courier 信使;快递
- accounting 会计
- shareholder 股东
- branch office 分公司
Tolls on roads became high enough to finance what has been called a road revolution, involving new surfaces and bridges, new passes through the Alps, and new inns and hospices for travelers.
- Toll 通行费
- finance 资助
- revolution 改革
- surface 表面;路
- pass 通道
- inn 旅馆
- hospice 收容所
The growth of mutual trust among merchants facilitated the growth of sales on credit and led to new developments in finance, such as the bill of exchange, a device that made the long, slow, and very dangerous shipment of coins unnecessary.
- mutual 相互的
- facilitate 促进
- sales on credit 赊账销售
- bill of exchange 汇票
- shipment 运输
The ventures of the German Hanseatic League illustrate these advancements.
- venture 商业项目 （A venture is a project or activity which is new, exciting, and difficult because it involves the risk of failure.）
The Hanseatic League was a mercantile association of European towns dating from 1159. The league grew by the end of the fourteenth century to include about 200 cities from Holland to Poland. Across regular, well- defined trade routes along the Baltic and North seas, the ships of league cities carried furs, wax, copper, fish, grain, timber, and wine.
- mercantile 商业的
- regular 规则
- well-defined 明确的
- copper 铜
- timber 木材
These goods were exchanged for finished products, mainly cloth and salt, from western cities. At cities such as Bruges and London, Hanseatic merchants secured special trading concessions, exempting them from all tolls and allowing them to trade at local fairs.
- finished product 成品
- secure 获得
- concession 特许权
- exempt 免除
- fair 集市
Hanseatic merchants established foreign trading centers, the most famous of which was the London Steelyard, a walled community with warehouses, offices, a church, and residential quarters for company representatives.
- walled 有墙围着的;封闭的
- warehouse 仓库
- residential 居住的
- quarter 住处
- representatives 代理人;代表
By the late thirteenth century, Hanseatic merchants had developed an important business technique, the business register. Merchants publicly recorded their debts and contracts and received a league guarantee for them. This device proved a decisive factor in the later development of credit and commerce in northern Europe.
- guarantee 担保
- credit 信贷
These developments added up to what one modern scholar has called "a commercial revolution."
- add up to 加起来(构成)
In the long run, the commercial revolution of the High Middle Ages (a d 1000-1300) brought about radical change in European society.
- High Middle Ages 中世纪鼎盛时期
One remarkable aspect of this change was that the commercial classes constituted a small part of the total population—never more than 10 percent. They exercised an influence far in excess of their numbers. The commercial revolution created a great deal of new wealth, which meant a higher standard of living.
- remarkable 显著的
- constitute 构成
- exercise 运用
- in excess of 超过
The existence of wealth did not escape the attention of kings and other rulers. Wealth could be taxed, and through taxation, kings could create strong and centralized states. In the years to come, alliances with the middle classes were to enable kings to weaken aristocratic interests and build the states that came to be called modern.
- taxation 税收
- centralized 中央集权的
- state 国家
- alliance 联盟
- middle class 中产阶级
The commercial revolution also provided the opportunity for thousands of agricultural workers to improve their social position. The slow but steady transformation of European society from almost completely rural and isolated to relatively more urban constituted the greatest effect of the commercial revolution that began in the eleventh century.
- rural 乡村的
- isolated 孤立的
- transformation 转型;转化;改造
- urban 城市化的
Even so, merchants and business people did not run medieval communities, except in central and northern Italy and in the county of Flanders.
- run medieval communities 掌管中世纪社会
Most towns remained small. The nobility and churchmen determined the predominant social attitudes, values, and patterns of thought and behavior. The commercial changes of the eleventh through fourteenth centuries did however, lay the economic foundation for the development of urban life and culture.
- nobility 贵族
- churchmen 牧师
- predominant 主要的
- values 价值观
- eleventh through fourteenth centuries 11到14世纪
- lay the economic foundation 打下经济基础
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