History II / Towns and Commerce, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries
Practice question · Sort into groups

Sort each item by whether it is best described as a TECHNIQUE or as an INSTITUTION.

Groups: Technique · Institution

Hints
  1. One column is about ways of doing things; the other about arrangements people are bound by.
  2. Bookkeeping is a method; a guild is a body with members.
Show the answer

Technique: The horse collar, Double-entry bookkeeping, Watermills for grinding and fulling

Institution: A town charter granting a market and a court, The guild regulating a trade’s entry and standards, The commune as a sworn association of townsmen

Why

The medieval commercial expansion is usually taught as institutional and the agricultural one as technical, and both halves of that are half wrong. Bookkeeping and the mill are techniques inside a commercial world; the charter and the commune are institutions that made the agricultural surplus mobile.

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