130 Trade and Commerce
Learning Objective
- List the factors that led to a change in commerce and trade in the Late Middle Ages
Key Points
- Explorers opened up new trade routes to the south of Africa, India, and America due to the dominant position of the Ottoman Empire impeding trade routes to the west.
- The Commercial Revolution began in the late-13th and early-14th centuries with the rise of insurance issuing, forms of credit, and new forms of accounting allowing for better financial oversight and accuracy.
- In England, the crises caused by the Great Famine and the Black Death from 1290–1348, as well as subsequent epidemics, produced many challenges for the economy, culminating in the Peasant’s Revolt.
- The English agricultural economy remained depressed throughout the 15th century, with growth coming from the greatly increased English cloth trade and manufacturing.
- Fairs grew in popularity, reaching their heyday in the 13th century, as the international wool trade increased. Despite an overall decline after the 14th century, the great fairs continued to play an important role in exchanging money and regional commerce.
- In cities linked to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, the Hanseatic League developed as a trade monopoly.
Terms
guild
Association of artisans or merchants who controlled the practice of their craft in a particular town. They were organized in a manner similar to something between a professional association and a trade union.
Ottoman Empire
Empire founded by Oghuz Turks under Osman Bey in northwestern Anatolia in 1299 and dissolved in 1923 in the aftermath of World War I, forming the new state of Turkey.
usury
The practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans intended to unfairly enrich the lender.
bullion
Gold bars, silver bars, and other precious metals bars or ingots.
During the Late Middle Ages, the increasingly dominant position of the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean presented an impediment to trade for the Christian nations of the west, who started looking for alternatives. Portuguese and Spanish explorers found new trade routes south of Africa to India, and across the Atlantic Ocean to America.
Start of the Commercial Revolution
In the late-13th and early-14th centuries, a process took place—primarily in Italy but partly also in the Holy Roman Empire—that historians have termed a “commercial revolution.” Among the innovations of the period were new forms of partnership and the issuing of insurance, both of which contributed to reducing the risk of commercial ventures; the bill of exchange and other forms of credit that circumvented the canonical laws for gentiles against usury and eliminated the dangers of carrying bullion; and new forms of accounting, in particular double-entry bookkeeping, which allowed for better oversight and accuracy.
Guilds
With the financial expansion, trading rights were more jealously guarded by the commercial elite. Towns saw the growing power of guilds that arose in