Hollanders in pursuit of mercantile success on Hanseatic ground c. 1440-1560. Bergen in Norway: the other story’, in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 123 (2010) 340-353 (original) (raw)
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Shaping Medieval Markets is an ambitious application of theory drawn from the new institutional economics to a study of late medieval commodity markets in the county of Holland. In 1200, this was a small, sparsely populated rural county but by the mid-fifteenth century it was, according to the author's calculations, even more commercialized than England or Flanders. Thus, the author implies, the county was poised to enable the later Dutch Golden Age. The book is meticulously argued, fully conversant with relevant secondary literature, usually sophisticated in its use of sources, and full of useful details about prices, measures, institutional developments, and so on in both Holland and the Low Countries more generally, information to which non-Dutch readers in particular may not have easy access. Although specialists of Flanders and England may object to some of the generalizations and although I had the occasional worry about method, Dijkman's argument is, on its own terms, convincing. My hesitations come, rather, from the analytical frame itself, a subject to which I will return. Dijkman's introduction carefully explains her purpose: 'to discover whether favourable commodity market institutions rooted in Holland's specific social and political structure contributed to the remarkable economic development Holland experienced in the late Middle Ages' (15). Dijkman already has her answer, so her task is to explain how and why Holland's market institutions worked to facilitate trade in movable goods. The introduction is followed by three sections, the first treating trade venues (fairs, rural markets, and the Dordrecht staple); the second, investigating rules (weights and measures, contract enforcement); the third, market performance (market integration and market orientation). In each, Dijkman systematically reviews the available evidence from Flanders and England, compares it to the evidence from Holland, and decides that for the most part people in Holland were freer to trade, had more venues for trading, and had more incentives to trade. To a certain extent, she argues, Holland's advantages came from its late start in building commercial institutions and the productive capacities of the county's land. With regard to the latter issue, she emphasizes Holland's unsuitability for arable farming (which forced the county into the grain trade), the early importance of dairying and fishing (both increasingly directed at the market), and the relative ease of
Business History Review, 2012
In the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, Northern Europe was a crucible of political, maritime and economic activity. Ships from ports all around the Baltic Sea as well as from the Low Countries plied the Baltic waters, triggering market integration, migration flows, nautical innovations and the dissemination of cultural values. This archival guide in three volumes (788 + 822 + 718 pp.) is an essential research tool for scholars studying these Baltic connections, providing descriptions of almost 1000 archival collections concerning trade, shipping, merchants, commodities, diplomacy, finances and migration in the years 1450-1800. These rich and varied sources kept at more than 100 repositories in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Sweden are herewith collected for the first time.
Medieval market institutions : the organisation of commodity markets in Holland, c. 1200 - c. 1450
2010
According to neo-institutional economics, markets are shaped by man-made rules and practices that determine market efficiency. Departing from this hypothesis, the dissertation examines how the organisation of commodity markets contributed to the rapid commercialisation of the county of Holland in the late Middle Ages. It discusses market institutions, their origins and their effects, and draws comparisons between Holland, Flanders and England. The reclamation of Holland’s extensive peatlands in the 11th to 13th centuries had given rise to a society characterised by a balanced relation between state and towns, weak seignorial power, a near absence of urban coercion over the countryside, and a limited role of guilds. This affected the organisation of commodity markets in several ways. In comparison to England, the control over trade exerted by the state and the nobility was weak. To be sure, in England royal and seignorial control had given commercialisation an early start. It allowed...
South Scandinavian fisheries in the sixteenth century: the Dutch connection
1996
To what extent did fishermen make contacts with each other across the North Sea in the sixteenth century? and of what kind were these contacts? This paper is especially concerned with the migration of fishermen and the transfer of technology. In particular it argues that Dutch competition had a profound influence on South Scandinavian 1 fisheries and the North European fish market. Danmark, ed. A. Pedersen et al. (1983). Ibid., Vesteuropa, Lybaek og dansk handel i senmiddelalderen. Historisk Tidsskrift 91 (1991) 361-401.