An Investigation On The Motivation Of Assart Colonization In The High Middle Ages In Western Europe

As an important social movement in the Middle Ages,the Western European Assart Colonization deserves our attention.In this large-scale Assart Colonization throughout Western Europe,all stratums of society,whether the church,the secular nobility,or the peasant masses,were actively participated in it.They reclaimed wasteland,emptied marshes,and actively developed planting and stock raising.Through their efforts,the agricultural economy in Western Europe had been greatly developed and had become a great push for the economic development in medieval Western Europe,and making Europe was at its flourishing period with the most vitality.Why did the colonization have such an impact? The search for this question therefore leads us to the source of the event,the cause of the colonization in Western Europe during this period.The church,the secular nobility,and the peasant masses,as the three main subjects of this movement,each subject also joined for different reasons.Therefore,this paper will start from the three subjects respectively and analyze the motivations of their participation in the colonization.First of all,in the first chapter,this paper will focus on the reasons why the church participated in the colonization.In this colonization of land,the church itself was not only an important entrepreneur,but also an active participant.On the one hand,since the church had accumulated a large number of real estate in various ways in its long-term development,which had provided the necessary material foundation for its colonization.On the other hand,the need for social production and economic development within the church had provided the internal driving force for colonization.At the same time,under the guidance of the monastic system —— the Rule of St Benedict,the monasteries in Western Europe practiced in the colonization of wasteland.Their actions not only improved the concept of despising manual labor in the society,but also established the social value of labor,which further stimulated the extensive social participation.In the second chapter,this paper will analyze the factors that influenced the King and the nobility to join the colonization.Since the King and the nobility were the main body of power in the country,long-term and large-scale colonization would never have been possible without their permission.First of all,as far as the King was concerned,on the one hand,the colonization meant that a large amount of wasteland was used for reclamation.On the other hand,the secular nobility and the religious nobility headed by the King not only controlled all the lands of Western Europe,but also controlled the wasteland with large forests.In order to carry out colonization,it is bound to solve the problem of the right to use the forest wasteland reasonably.In this process,taking the fine of colonization as an opportunity,the royal forests brought benefits to the royal family.After that,the colonization fees charged for the royal forests benefited the royal family more and further allowed forest disafforestation to meet people’s reclamation needs.Undoubtedly,the gradual relaxation of the royal forest policy had become the key to the colonization.In addition,the aristocratic policy of opening up territories had also become a major factor in the development of colonization.Moreover,as a result of the development of commerce,the colonization of wasteland had become a profitable enterprise,which could satisfy the expanding demand for consumption and money of the nobility.At the same time,the protection of the privileges of freedom in the new commercial reclamation areas also promoted the development of colonization.In the third chapter,this paper will analyze the motivation that promoted peasant masses to join the colonization.The peasantry had always been a class of laborers fixed on the land since ancient times,and had relied on the land for basic survival all the time.However,the feudal land system in Western Europe allowed a small amount of land to be shared by the vast majority of the peasant class.With the explosion of population,the contradiction between human beings and the land had become more acute.Furthermore,the Western European agricultural economy had also contributed to the land colonization of the peasantry to a certain extent.On the one hand,owing to the improvement of agricultural technology and farming methods,the progress of agricultural economy had further aroused farmers’ demand for agricultural development.On the other hand,the shortcomings in practical application of the innovation of agricultural technology and farming methods had created conditions for the further development of agricultural economy.All kinds of combined forces finally made the Assart Colonization possible.