十六、十七世纪英国城市经济职能的变化及其意义

The Economy of English Towns in the 16th and 17th Centuries

从15世纪起,由于乡村工业的广泛兴起,英国的工业重心呈现着向农村移动的态势。为适应这种新的形势,城市在16、17世纪里也进行着自身经济结构和经济职能的调整和变革。本文拟对各类城市的这种变化进行分别考察,探讨处于这种变化之中的城市对英国社会经济发展的作用。

There were three types of towns in the English urban society in the 16th and 17th centuries.Its bottom was the market town distributed throughout the whole country,this town had some rural overtones.The middle of the urban system was a number ofimportant provincial cities, which were the social and economical centres for a co-unty or a region. The peak of the urban pyramid was London, the capital of the king-dom. In the two centuries, all towns had many economical changes, of which thedeyelopment of the commercial activities, the growth of the specialized economywere the most substantial. Morever, the service area of town extended from thesurrounding countryside to a larger world. Thus every town became the unit of thenational market network. These changes made economical life unitized on thenational level, and promoted the course of the transition from feudalism to capita-lism, from the agricultural society to the industrial on e in England.