Flemish manufacturies equivalent in the East

Vitalis

Vitalis

Would it be possible for Poland, or any other Eastern European state, really, to have an area equivalent to Western Europe's highly urbanized area, full of manufacturies, in, say, High Middle Ages and beyond?

How would it look like? Where would it be located? Pommerania, Prussia?
What about Pommeranian/Polabian state with Lubeck/Lubice in their possesion?

I am interested in how to achieve this, and it's effects on Medieval eastern European kingdoms.
 
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FillyofDelphi

Banned
The rivers and good anchorages, for the most part, don't match up to form a good network for easy transport, so the idea of dense, bulk production centers is going to be hard to sustainably pull off (to say nothing of the fact the Low Counteries unique political position and history kept them, by and large, lacking in a strong fisted domestic feudal class that allowed the towns to leverage power and privlage). Your best bet is probably in the Baltic, maybe as a shipbuilding center in part? I'd need to be building domination of the Baltic, but given Denmark hems them in and Rus is poorly developed/dense I question how much even that would be worth
 
Vitalis

Vitalis

Well, the Baltic trade was profitable for the Hansa, so is there a possibility for, say, a trade republic developing in the area? For example, based in Prussia, with the port in Danzig and all. Actually, thinking about that, what's wrong with Vistula and Oder, to be frank? They are quite navigable and historicaly Vistula was very important for the trade. Poland could defenitely be more urbanized if given a chance, and the mouth of Vistula in particular.

But ignoring the trade, which would be difficult because of the Danish straits (again, this can be bypassed, by aquiring land connection to Hamburg, for example), I was wondering what place in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe could be more urbanized/densly populated than it historicaly was. What area would be ideal for manufactories and factories? Again, Łódź was the centre of cloth industry, but it only began in XIX century, could it be started earlier? Would a population density on the scale of Rheinland be even possible in places like Poland or Ukraine?
 

FillyofDelphi

Banned
The Hansa was a proto-corperation/trading association, not a sovergein state, and hardly managed anything in a centeralized or consistent way that could be done by a republic in Danzig. Northern German and the Low Counteries also had easy access to the markets and supplies of France and England (Cheap raw English wool was key to Low Country manufactures) and access to the richer internal markets of the Rhine and the internal workings and legal loopholes within the HRE as a tool to get freedom from restrictive feudal management. So long as Poland is a united, rural landlord dominated Kingdom the coastal cities can't pry out a similar level of freedom.

The Vistula and Oder don't lead to REMOTELY as large as consumer base as the North Sea, Channel, and Rhine. You hit a handful of modest sized cities, but mostly manor style areas that can efficently spin their own cloth in home cottage industries, so there's not enough demand to generate the conditions for mass manufacture to profitably thrive. Yes, Poland can MAYBE urbanize, but the political structure and economy is against it. You'd need to swing the conditions of Eastern Europe pretty radically, which is harder to do given the geography and general historical trend of the place (Nomadic groups/raiders can thrive on the steppes/flatlands in a way they couldn't in Western Europe, and Russian rivers/commerce/political focus point the wrong way to be integrated into the rest of Eastern Europe's economy. The Carpathians also make connection into the south-east expensive and complicated). You'd almost need to Nerf the Asiatic nomads out of political relevence
 

FillyofDelphi

Banned
Hvalrossen said:
Maybe a independant state could exist in the Vistula delta?
Click to expand...

It would be swallowed up by somebody around it unless you take a political sledgehammer to the region, and large flat plains with internal rivers aren't a very survival place for Balkanization. You can't secure yourself without a buffer or distance or geographic obsticles. And the Hitherlands of such a state would be underpopulated and poor.
 
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