托福阅读真题第255篇
美国大学经济学专业排名
托福阅读真题第255篇Economic Decline in Europe during the 14th Century
Economic Decline in Europe during the 14th Century
After three hundred years of impressive gains in wealth and population, Europe’s economy began to slow around 1300. Several factors accounted for the decline. One of the most important, though perhaps the least dramatic to relate, was a shift in climate. The remarkably fair weather of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took a decided turn for the wor in the fourteenth Chronicler’s comments, tree-ring examination, and pollen analysis all indicate that over the cour of the fourteenth century Europe’s average annual temperature declined approximately two degrees Celsius— which may sound like very little at first, but if one considers current projections about the possible effects of global warming, in which the average annual temperature shift is only one degree Celsius, a rather different impression emerges. As the temperature dropped, shortening the summer growing ason and affecting the resilience of certain vegetable species, the wind and rain incread. This
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meant that crop yields declined precipitously and the agricultural economy began to contract. As food supplies dwindled, costs ro accordingly and cut into the amount of capital that people had available for other purchas or investments. This in turn added to the gradual constriction of the commercial economy.
英语四级模拟题
utp>铁中铮铮Just as significant were changes in the geopolitics of the Mediterranean world. The decline of the Byzantine Empire, which had dominated the eastern Mediterranean, meant the interruption of trade routes to central and eastern Asia. The ri of new political powers signaled a new era in Mediterranean connections, one in which religious loyalty and ethnic fidelity mattered more than commercial ties. Conquently the movement of goods and rvices between east and west began to slow. European interest in circumnavigating Africa and exploring westward into the Atlantic Ocean, in fact, originated in the desire into the trade with eastern Asia that had long sustained Europe’s economic growth.
A more immediate cau of the sputtering economy was an obrvable abnce; since th
e eleventh century there had been few significant changes in the technology of agriculture. Developments like the wheeled plow, the rotation of crops, and the u of natural fertilizer that had made possible the agricultural revolution of the past two hundred years had had no follow-up. Farming was still conducted in 1300 roughly the same way it had been done in 1100, but with a considerably larger population to feed, there was little surplus left to generate fresh capital. As a conquence, food production fell perilously clo to subsistence level.Although the failure of agriculture to keep up with the growing population did not become a crisis until the fourteenth century, clear signs of the problem had already emerged by the middle of the thirteenth century, when occasionally low yields due to bad weather or social disruption revealed how perilous the balance between Europe’s population and its food supply had become. Apart from territories bet by war, the tentativeness of the food supply became evident first on the farmlands most recently brought under cultivation during the economic depression of the twelfth century. The less established farmers of the lands frequently did not have the means to survive successive poor harvests. Tenant farmers unable to pay their tents thus
began to slip into debt, and landlords who depended on rents for their income began to rely increasingly on urban financiers for credit.
Even whole governments became entangled in the credit crisis, England being the most notable example. The cycle of indebtedness was hardly inevitable, but the string of bank failures and commercial collaps in the first half of the fourteenth century was striking. The famed Bardi and Peruzzi banks of Florence (the two largest financial hous of Europe) collapd spectacularly in the 1340’s. They were soon followed by the Riccardi bank of Lucca, who massive loans had kept the English government afloat for years. Many more hous collapd in turn.红楼梦英文
An important demographic trend resulted from and contributed to the economic malai: large-scale migration of rural populations into the cities. Europe’s overall population growth from 1050 to 1300 had been primarily due to an increa in the number of rural folk. But as economic forces made agrarian life more perilous around 1300, hard-presd farmers and their families began to migrate to the cities in large number in arch of work.
cheerleaderMany cities doubled in size, and some even tripled, over the cour of just one or two generations. Few were capable of absorbing such large numbers of people.
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亭子间►After three hundred years of impressive gains in wealth and population, Europe’s economy began to slow around 1300. Several factors accounted for the decline. One of the most important, though perhaps the least dramatic to relate, was a shift in climate. The remarkably fair weather of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took a decided turn for the wor in the fourteenth Chronicler’s comments, tree-ring examination, and pollen analysis all indicate that over the cour of the fourteenth century Europe’s average annual temperature declined approximately two degrees Celsius— which may sound like very little at first, but if one considers current projections about the possible effects of global warming, in which the average annual temperature shift is only one degree Celsius, a rather different impression emerges. As the temperature dropped, shortening the summer growing ason and affecting the resilience of certain vegetable species, the
wind and rain incread. This meant that crop yields declined precipitously and the agricultural economy began to contract. As food supplies dwindled, costs ro accordingly and cut into the amount of capital that people had available for other purchas or investments. This in turn added to the gradual constriction of the commercial economy.
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►tristeJust as significant were changes in the geopolitics of the Mediterranean world. The decline of the Byzantine Empire, which had dominated the eastern Mediterranean, meant the interruption of trade routes to central and eastern Asia. The ri of new political powers signaled a new era in Mediterranean connections, one in which religious loyalty and ethnic fidelity mattered more than commercial ties. Conquently the movement of goods and rvices between east and west began to slow. European interest in circumnavigating Africa and exploring westward into the Atlantic Ocean, in fact, originated in the desire into the trade with eastern Asia that had long sustained Europe’s economic growth.
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►Just as significant were changes in the geopolitics of the Mediterranean world. The decline of the Byzantine Empire, which had dominated the eastern Mediterranean, meant the interruption of trade routes to central and eastern Asia. The ri of new political powers signaled a new era in Mediterranean connections, one in which religious loyalty and ethnic fidelity mattered more than commercial ties. Conquently the movement of goods and rvices between east and west began to slow. European interest in circumnavigating Africa and exploring westward into the Atlantic Ocean, in fact, originated in the desire into the trade with eastern Asia that had long sustained Europe’s economic growth.
