Origins of The Term
The term itself was coined in the middle of the 20th century, by economic historian Roberto Sabatino Lopez, to shift focus away from the English Industrial Revolution. In his best-known book, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages (1971, with numerous reprints), Lopez argued that the key contribution of the medieval period to European history was the creation of a commercial economy, centered at first in the Italo-Byzantine eastern Mediterranean, but eventually extending to the Italian city-states and over the rest of Europe.
Read more about this topic: Commercial Revolution
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