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The economy of Scotland in the Middle Ages covers all forms of economic activity in the modern boundaries of Scotland, between the departure of the Romans from Northern Britain in the fifth century, until the advent of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century, including agriculture, crafts and trade. Having between a fifth or sixth of the arable or good pastoral land and roughly the same amount of coastline as England and Wales, marginal pastoral agriculture and fishing were two of the most important aspects of the Medieval Scottish economy. With poor communications, in the early Middle Ages most settlements needed to achieve a degree of self-sufficiency in agriculture. Most farms were operated by a family unit and used an infield and outfield system. Arable farming grew in the High Middle Ages and agriculture entered a period of relative boom between the thirteenth century and late fifteenth century. Unlike England, Scotland had no towns dating from Roman occupation. From the twelfth century there are records of burghs, chartered towns, which became major centre of crafts and trade. There are also Scottish coins, although English coinage probably remained more significant in trade, and until the end of the period barter was probably the most common form of exchange. Craft and industry remained relatively undeveloped before the end of the Middle Ages and, although there were extensive trading networks based in Scotland, while the Scots exported largely raw materials, they imported increasing quantities of luxury goods, resulting in a bullion shortage and perhaps helping to create a financial crisis in the fifteenth century. ==Background== (詳細はpastoral land, under 60 metres above sea level, and most of this is located in the south and east. This made marginal pastoral farming and fishing the key factors in the pre-modern economy.〔E. Gemmill and N. J. Mayhew, ''Changing Values in Medieval Scotland: a Study of Prices, Money, and Weights and Measures'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ISBN 0521473853, pp. 8–10.〕 Its north Atlantic position means that it has very heavy rainfall, which encouraged the spread of blanket peat bog, the acidity of which, combined with high level of wind and salt spray, made most of the western islands treeless. The existence of hills, mountains, quicksands and marshes made internal communication and conquest extremely difficult.〔C. Harvie, ''Scotland: a Short History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), ISBN 0192100548, pp. 10–11.〕 After the departure of the Romans from Northern Britain, in the fifth century four major circles of influence had emerged in what is now Scotland. In the east were the Picts, whose kingdoms eventually stretched from the river Forth to Shetland; in the west the Gaelic (Goidelic)-speaking people of Dál Riata with their royal fortress at Dunadd in Argyll, with close links with the island of Ireland, from which they brought with them the name Scots; in the south was the British (Brythonic) Kingdom of Alt Clut, descendants of the peoples of the Roman-influenced kingdoms of "The Old North"; finally, there were the Angles who had overrun much of southern Britain and held the Kingdom of Bernicia (later the northern part of Northumbria), in the south-east.〔J. R. Maddicott and D. M. Palliser, eds, ''The Medieval State: essays presented to James Campbell'' (London: Continuum, 2000), ISBN 1-85285-195-3, p. 48.〕 This situation was transformed from the eighth century when ferocious Viking raids began. Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles eventually fell to the Norsemen.〔W. E. Burns, ''A Brief History of Great Britain'' (Infobase Publishing, 2009), ISBN 0-8160-7728-2, pp. 44–5.〕 These threats may have speeded a long term process of gaelicisation of the Pictish kingdoms, which adopted Gaelic language and customs and which probably facilitated a merger of the Gaelic and Pictish crowns. This culminated in the rise of Cínaed mac Ailpín (Kenneth MacAlpin) in the 840s, which brought to power the House of Alpin, who became the leaders of a combined Gaelic-Pictish kingdom, known as the Kingdom of Alba and later as Scotland.〔B. Yorke, ''The Conversion of Britain: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain c.600–800'' (Pearson Education, 2006), ISBN 0-582-77292-3, p. 54.〕 From the sixth century, Scotland experienced a process of Christianisation, traditionally seen as carried out by Irish-Scots missionaries, including St Ninian, St Kentigern and St Columba and to a lesser extent those from Rome and England.〔R. A. Fletcher, ''The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity'' (University of California Press, 1999), ISBN 0520218590, pp. 231–3.〕 However, Gilbert Markus highlights the fact that most of these figures were not church-founders, but were usually were active in areas where Christianity had already become established, probably through gradual diffusion that is almost invisible in the historical record. This would have included trade, conquest and intermarriage.〔G. Markus, "Conversion to Christianity", in M. Lynch, ed., ''The Oxford Companion to Scottish History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ISBN 0-19-211696-7, pp. 78–9.〕 There are almost no written sources from which to re-construct the demography of Medieval Scotland. Estimates have been for the early period made of a population of 10,000 inhabitants in Dál Riata and 80–100,000 for Pictland, which was probably the largest region.〔L. R. Laing, ''The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland, c. AD 400–1200'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), ISBN 0521547407, pp. 21–2.〕 From the formation of the Kingdom of Alba in the tenth century, to before the Black Death reached the country in 1349, estimates based on the amount of farmable land, suggest that population may have grown from half a million to a million.〔R. E. Tyson, "Population Patterns", in M. Lynch, ed., ''The Oxford Companion to Scottish History'' (New York, 2001), pp. 487–8.〕 Although there is no reliable documentation on the impact of the plague, if the pattern followed that in England, then the population may have fallen to as low as half a million by the end of the fifteenth century.〔S. H. Rigby, ed., ''A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages'' (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), ISBN 0631217851, pp. 109–11.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Economy of Scotland in the Middle Ages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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