March 14, 2009
Blanchard, Ian (1986) “The Continental European Cattle Trades, 1400-1600”, The Economic History Review, 39/3, 427-460.


Introduction
The European international cattle trade arose in the 1470s out of a “context of a network of regional markets” for locally grazed animals (p.428). Antwerp for instance drew its supplies mostly from Zealand and Holland. The diminutive livestock trade was limited to the Hungarian exports to Venice and some Rhenish towns (Frankfurt, Cologne; p.429). “As gold production recovered in Hungary during the second quarter of the 15th century, […] the economy was subject to the dual pressures of a hard exchange and an excessive money supply which caused its export products to be overpriced on international market and turned a previously strong balance of trade into a decidedly weak one” (p.430). The northern Polish (Breslau, Poznan, Gniezno) products partly replaced the Hungarian cattle after the 1420s, they were exported through the fair of Leipzig. The Hungarian solely retained the south European markets. Read the rest of this entry »
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Early Modern, Economic History, Europe, reading notes | Tagged: 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, cattle, fairs, food, Germany, Hungary, land routes, meat, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, trade, transaction costs, transports, Venice |
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March 13, 2009
Gelderblom, Oscar (2005) “The decline of Fairs and Merchant Guilds in the Low Countries, 1250-1650″, Economy and Society in the Low Countries before 1850, Working Paper 1, 47p.



This article is available on line
Between the 11th and 13th century, during the Commercial Revolution, long-distance trade in Europe expanded rapidly thanks to organizational improvements such as fairs and merchant guilds (p.1). In fairs, merchants increased their chance to find business partners and benefited from the protection and the contract-enforcement abilities of the local jurisdictions. Merchant guilds were associations of traders from the same origin present in a foreign market and united in order to increase their bargain power with local authorities (p.2). Read the rest of this entry »
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Early Modern, Economic History, Europe, Middle Ages, reading notes | Tagged: 1200s, 1300s, 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Belgium, Bruges, fairs, guilds, institutions, merchant community, merchant guilds, merchant networks, merchants, Netherlands |
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Posted by Ben
March 12, 2009
Bolton, Jim L. and Guidi Bruscoli, Francesco (2008) “When did Antwerp replace Bruges as the commercial and financial centre of north-western Europe? The evidence of the Borromei ledger for 1438”, The Economic History Review, 61/2, 360-379.



This article is part of the on-going research project, the Borromei family and its banks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
The classic account of the rise of Antwerp
In the 1940-60s, the Belgian scholar J. A. van Houtte produced what was to become the classical account of the rise of Antwerp. In his view, Bruges was not only the entrepôt where goods from the Mediterranean and the Baltic were exchanged, but also the door to and from the dynamic Flemish market, which at the time was boosted by a large urban population, a wealthy bourgeoisie and the magnificent court of the dukes of Burgundy. Read the rest of this entry »
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Economic History, Europe, Middle Ages, reading notes | Tagged: 1400s, Antwerp, bank, Belgium, Bergen op zoom, Borromei, Brabant, Bruges, Burgundy, fairs, merchants, Netherlands, trade |
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Posted by Ben
March 6, 2009
Epstein, Stephan R. (2000) “States and fair”, in Freedom and Growth. The rise of states and markets in Europe, 1300-1750, Idem, Abingdon: Routeledge, 73-88.



New fairs everywhere
During the second half of the 14th century and the 15th century a great number of fairs were created around Europe. Testimony to their success, most of them lasted until the 1500s and beyond. They responded to the problems posed by the lack of “cheap and flexible system of distribution” over the continent, specially between the depopulated cattle-grazing uplands and the meat-, wool- and dairy-consuming towns (p.75). Livestock fairs where thus “often set up at the foot of major mountain passes”, Besançon for instance (p.76). Read the rest of this entry »
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Economic History, Europe, Middle Ages, reading notes | Tagged: 1300s, 1400s, 1500s, creative destruction, England, fairs, institutions, state-making, trade |
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Posted by Ben
March 5, 2009
Munro, John H. (2006) “South German silver, European textiles, and Venetian trade with the Levant and Ottoman Empire, c. 1370 to c. 1720: a non-Mercantilist approach to the balance of payment problem”, in Relazione economiche tra Europea e mondo islamico, seccoli XII – XVII, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi, Florence: Le Monnier, 905-960.



This article is available on line
Introduction
For mercantilists, gold and silver are not just mediums of exchange but the most tangible form of wealth (store of value) and a country’s veritable life-blood. In their view, the economic contraction of the later 14th and 15th centuries were caused by the outflow of precious metal to the East (p.905). But according to J. H. Munro, there was no such thing as a ‘bullion famine’, at worst some “periodic scarcity of coined money” in 1320-1340, 1370-1420, and 1440-1470 (p.906). Read the rest of this entry »
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Early Modern, Economic History, Europe, Middle Ages, reading notes | Tagged: 1300s, 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, Antwerp, bullion, East India Company, English Levant Company, fairs, Germany, industry, Mediterranean, monetary history, silver, textile, trade, Venice, VOC |
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Posted by Ben
February 10, 2008
Margairaz Dominique (1986) “La formation du réseau des foires et des marchés : stratégies, pratiques et idéologie”, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 1215-1242.



This article is available online.
Introduction
Including space in the models developed by the economists is something relatively new. Each good, service and factor has its own geography which may have nothing to do with administrative frontiers (1215). The question of supply and demand can be enriched by issues regarding space and the actors involved. The understanding in 18th century France (Gournay, Turgot, Necker) that failures of the demand or the supply can lead to catastrophes, triggered interest for trade (the liberty of the grain trade being one of the most important political battles of the 18th century in the kingdom). Space was an essential problem that policymakers of the time tackled by constructing roads, waterways and by redefining the administrative division of the French territory (1216). Read the rest of this entry »
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Economic History | Tagged: 1700s, fairs, France, history of economics, marketplace |
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