According to some historicians the Middle Age began with the Islamic expansionism and with the arise in Western Europe of the Carolingian Empire of Charles the Great, crowned emperor by Pope Leo III the Christmas day of the year 800. Then his Carolingian Renaissance started and the Western Roman Empire newly began.
On the contrary, the trade within the two different worlds( the Islamic and the Christian ) had never stopped... if the Italian seafaring Republics have been so precociously developped is because they traded with the Islamic Countries!
Another relevant change relates to the late-roman urban model which showed more directly the comparison between the Germans and the Romans; the tribal model of the Germans was founded on raid, while the Romans' model was founded on the State intervention in the Economy. Hence, when the Barbaric invasions began, they founded themselves in a crisis without solution, as the cohesion between markets, cities and countryside had collapsed... the historical link between cities and countryside collapsed. Anyway cities went on their existence and kept on having an economical role with their forum, place of market which it was still active even if less important.
Bondsmen existed but it is a quite stereotyped concept, in fact some farmers were servants as they choosed to stay under a seignior, but they weren't forced to do that... they have to pay rents with money or with corvées: if he couldn't afford to pay the rent with money or natural products, he could always work in the fields. There's so much confusion upon the 'ius primae noctis', which wasn't the lord abuse on the future farmer's wife, but just a tax the farmer need to pay if he whished to marry someone.
So the early Middle Age started... it certainly wasn't a period of complete desolation, as many think.
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