How did rural self-sufficiency decline in the fifteenth century and peasants become absorbed into the market economy?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In the middle of the fifteenth century, the focus of the European economy was predominantly agricultural with some degree of trade. Within one hundred years, the economic picture of Europe had changed dramatically with the creation of a mercantilist system and a world market that was flooded with goods from the New World, as well as luxury goods. This went hand in hand with an upward spike in the economy when the peasants and agriculturalists were integrated into the market economy through the production of surplus agriculture. As they sold surplus agricultural goods and bought newly available goods, rural farmers no longer produced the goods themselves but relied on their availability in the market as a place to spend cash earned from surplus agriculture. While in a sense this was a modernization and switch to a cash economy, in another sense, it lessened their independence by taking away the necessity of making goods themselves.