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The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 2017
This article explores whether or not Flemish commercial networks reached the interior of the Iberian Peninsula and if so, how they functioned. By analysing the case of the Valladolid region through hitherto unexplored sources, this study shows that the economic opportunities offered by this region did not pass unno-ticed by the Flemish merchants. While previous research focused on the conceptual dichotomy between ambulant and sedentary migration, this article shows that in practice, the Flemish merchant community in the Valladolid region covered the whole spectrum between these two positions. In fact, the hybrid nature of this Flemish merchant community seems to have been its strength as it connected different trade networks to each other and permitted the transfer of commercial expertise.
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Since its beginnings, the historiography of Atlantic communities has been a complex field, as it involves various inter-disciplinary issues. Historians are able to use methods taken from the social sciences to analyse groups and societies that fall under different jurisdictions from both a historico-anthropological and sociological perspective. However, it remains to be seen what theoretical concepts and methodological approaches may be drawn from this topic. By using such methods, recent contributions have been able to explain the principal factors driving the expansion of merchant networks. In the words of Fréderic Mauro, ‘the study of merchant communities represents the sociological dimension of research on merchant empires’. From research on these communities in the Atlantic region, it is possible to infer that a key element of their socio-political and economic position was their strongly urban and commercial nature.
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This paper presents the results of a research project undertaken at the University of Granada, and in collaboration with several European research groups. We aim to investigate the process of interaction and integration between different economic areas in the western Mediterranean during the late Middle Ages. The southeast of the Iberian Peninsula has been analysed as a case study. Genoese merchants were particularly active within this area; they played a key role in connecting diverse trading areas (including Seville, Granada, and Valencia), thanks to their complex trading network. They controlled a wide range of production activities in key places, playing an important role in the transmission of technical know-how, and thereby promoting the reorganization of production activities. This complex process is exemplified by the production of high-quality pottery (regarded as a luxury item).
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The Iberian Peninsula enjoyed a strategic geographic position on the long-distance routes between the Mediterranean and Atlantic Europe from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and on the expansion routes over the Atlantic Ocean. However, until the thirteenth century, the development of these maritime routes remained very modest, basically driven by maritime pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela and the fleets of Crusaders from northern Europe who circumnavigated the Peninsula on their way to the new Christian kingdoms of the Mediterranean Levant between 1096 and 1270. From the thirteenth century onward, a shift unfolded from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic owing to political, economic and technological factors, thence granting the Atlantic façade a strategic position of the highest order within medieval commercial exchanges. The economy of the area evolved around three large hubs of growth: the Northern Cantabrian area, Lisbon to the West and Seville to the South. Urban historiography has granted priority to the study of these large ports over the smaller ones. However, investigations on maritime commerce, navigation, and port societies have proven the valuable role played by small and medium-sized ports within the “network” and have led to a correction of the myopic approach of macroeconomic studies. The foundation by royal decree of some fifty port towns between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries lay the structural foundations for the development of maritime routes along the Cantabrian coastline. In this sense, Cantabrian ports constitute a subset of the urban system of the Crown of Castile and its relations with the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, based on diverse factors such as geographic conditions, the political administrative dynamics, infrastructures, and economic and particularly commercial relationships, all of which was the object of this paper.
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![[2023] Review of: JIMÉNEZ-MONTES, G., A Dissimulated Trade: Northern European Timber Merchants in Seville (1574–1598), Boston; Leiden, Brill, 2022 Cover Page](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/104856316/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade around Europe 1300-1600 explores the links between maritime trading networks around Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the North and Baltic Seas. Maritime trade routes connected diverse geographical and cultural spheres, contributing to a more integrated Europe in both cultural and material terms. This volume explores networks’ economic functions alongside their intercultural exchanges, contacts and practical arrangements in ports on the European coasts. The collection takes as its central question how shippers and merchants were able to connect regional and interregional trade circuits around and beyond Europe in the late medieval period. It is divided into four parts, with chapters in Part I looking across broad themes such as ships and sailing routes, maritime law, financial linkages and linguistic exchanges. In the following parts - divided into the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea, and the Atlantic and North Seas - contributors present case studies addressing themes including conflict resolution, relations between different types of main ports and their hinterland, the local institutional arrangements supporting maritime trade, and the advantages and challenges of locations around the continent. The volume concludes with a summary that points to the extraterritorial character of trading systems during this fascinating period of expansion. Drawing together an international team of contributors, The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade around Europe is a vital contribution to the study of maritime history and the history of trade. It is essential reading for students and scholars in these fields
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![The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade around Europe 1300-1600: Commercial Networks and Urban Autonomy (eds. Wim Blockmans, Mikhail Krom and Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz) [with Table of Contents and list of contributors] Cover Page](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/52341167/thumbnails/1.jpg)
]((with H. Casado Alonso, F. Miranda and J. Sequeira) International Trade and Commerce, 1000–1500
An Economic History of the Iberian Peninsula, 700–2000, ed. by Pedro Lains and others, Cambridge. ISBN (digital edition): 9781108770217, 2024
This chapter analyses foreign trade and trade routes in the Iberian Peninsula between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. It overviews the dual circumstances of the Christian kingdoms and of the Muslim al-Andalus over the long term, although it focuses especially on the period between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries, and on events taking place in Castile, Aragon and Portugal. The study tries to answer questions like how were the Iberian trade ties forged, how did the Iberian economies integrate with the Mediterranean and north-European markets, and what role did Iberian and foreign traders play in the commercial gamble. For this purpose, the Iberian trade is examined from three different angles. First, from the routes and the goods traded among the Iberian kingdoms as well as outside Iberia. Second, from the role of agents and institutions. This will involve an analysis of the distinction between local and foreign traders, as well as the influence of institutional frameworks on foreign trade. Finally, the chapter clarifies the reasons why Iberia achieved a leading position in European trade during the later middle ages, and why it spearheaded foreign trade at the dawn of the sixteenth century and the so-called "First Global Age".
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“Dynamiques économiques portuaires et réseaux dans l’Atlantique en perspective historique” (XVe – XXIe siècles) Coord. Ana María Rivera Medina et Daniel Castillo Hidalgo, 2016
In the 14th and 15th centuries Antwerp was a port of considerable dimensions and commercial importance. The Brabant fairs of Bergen op Zoom and Antwerp were a major meeting point for merchants from the Low Countries, the Rhineland and England from the fourteenth century onwards. This article gives a short synthesis of the existing literature on the earliest period of the commercial history of Antwerp, little of which has been published in English so far, and map the commercial activity in Antwerp in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the trade with the staple goods grain, fish and salt. The testimonies related to the litigation concerning the staple between Antwerp and the towns of Brussels and Mechlin in the early fifteenth century provide detailed information concerning the destinations, traded products as well as trading practices and strategies, so that a picture of the commercial networks and practices of Antwerp during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century can be established which is complementary to the older historiography concerning the international trade at the Antwerp fairs.
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![Michael Limberger, « Regional and interregional trading networks and commercial practices at the port of Antwerp in the 14th and 15th centuries. The testimony of merchants and skippers in court records », Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos [En ligne], Colloques, mis en ligne le 16 décembre 2016 Cover Page](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/51616752/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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