Power and Profit
Sep. 1st, 2007 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowPeter Spufford's Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe is not an easy read. It's pretty hefty, for one thing - more than 400 quarto pages, not counting endmatter. It's also rather dense. My first attempt to read it foundered somewhere in the first chapter, after which I set it aside for a year or so. But if you're interested in how things work in human society, and how modern Europe began to come to be, reading this book is rewarding. Details under the cut.
The book begins with a discussion of the thirteenth-century "commercial revolution", which saw European economies and populations rise to heights that were to decline again in the crises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and not be regained until the seventeenth or even eighteenth centuries. Spufford points to several factors that made this possible. First and most important is the discovery and exploitation of new lodes of silver and gold, especially in Bohemia; this led to an increase in the amount of coined money in circulation, making it possible for trade to grow as well. (The rise in available bullion was important, since Europe suffered a chronic balance of trade problem with the other major centers of Eurasian civilization. Europe, for the most part, exported raw materials or low-level manufactures in exchange for luxury goods, and the balance had to be made up in silver and gold.) The new volume of trade made it possible for a division of labor within business ventures, between sedentary merchants (staying at home, mostly in northern Italy, and organizing the import-export trade), commercial carriers (either by land or sea), and local agents, full-time resident overseas or beyond the Alps. This is commonplace now, but it was an innovation in medieval Europe, and substantially amplified trade and its benefits. Other consequences of the revolution included new institutions such as the trading company and professional couriers, new techniques in bookkeeping, and the development of insurance and local and international banking.
The second chapter focuses on the demand side of trade; royal and lesser courts, increasingly wealthy, began demanding more and different luxuries. With increased currency available, the barter-and-service economy of feudalism began to break down, and officers of the court came to be paid employees rather than feudatories. They were drawn to the center, and the royal capitals grew in size substantially - the first large cities in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Palaces required building and extension, and also to be decorated; architects, masons, and artists came into greater demand. Where the kings and princes led, nobles and merchants followed, and many of Europe's cities underwent frenzies of building, demolition, and rebuilding. (The cities where medieval architecture, other than churches, is still visible are those which fell into eclipse, such as Avignon after the departure of the papacy. In most other cities, only traces remain.) The growing cities needed to be provisioned as well, and drew upon larger and larger hinterlands for their survival; the money-based economy thus spread into the countryside as well. (The consequences of the latter included monetary taxation and the possibility of eviction of tenants; peasant life became rather less secure in these days, which only added more to the growth of the cities.)
The third, relatively brief, chapter discusses the main arteries of land-based trade, between the great commercial centers in northern Italy and the princely or mercantile cities north of the Alps.
Chapter four discusses "helps and hindrances to trade", including in particular infrastructure. The roads and bridges of the Romans had largely fallen into disrepair after the fall of the western empire, and institutions capable of rebuilding and maintaining them required the re-emergence of sufficient wealth (to rebuild) and continuing commerce (to finance maintenance). Initially, much of this fell to religious bodies; just as the monks of the order of St. Bernard helped merchants and other travelers in the passes of the Alps, so too did orders spring up to deal with ferries and, later, bridges, with roads, upgrading them from mule-tracks to wagon roads, and with inns, hostelries, and (eventually) warehouses. As time passed, this responsibility began to pass to the increasingly wealthy and powerful governments, which also began working on canals and on the suppression of brigandage. (Of course, sometimes the brigands themselves were government agents...)
Next come two chapters on the nature and flow of trade, first in manufactured goods, then in foodstuffs and raw materials. Here Spufford discusses the emergence of major industrial areas - the Low Countries, Tuscany, and later on southern Germany - and the various goods each produced. The changes in production over time, mostly driven by import-substitution, receive attention - the development of a silk industry in Italy, the shift in production of woolens from Flanders to England, and so on. The European grain markets - one covering the Mediterranean, the other in the north - are discussed, and the ways in which they influenced each other. (Famine in the north made it, on occasion, profitable to divert galleys, normally low-capacity luxury carriers, to transporting grain from the Mediterranean to England.) Spices, textiles, and dyestuffs also get their share of attention. (Readers of Dunnett's "House of Niccolo" books will find some of the discussion familiar and interesting.) Along with these come ideas, technologies, artforms - and plagues.
The seventh chapter takes a closer look at balance-of-trade issues, trying to extract information from rather meager data on the flow of precious metals from mines in Central Europe and the Balkans to the great commercial centers and thence, inevitably, eastward, "to Kaffa, Trebizond and Brusa, to Acre, Lajazzo, Beirut and Alexandria, and further still to Damascus, Tabriz, Samarkand and Basra to end up in China or India". The data is thin, but the analysis is vital, since so much of the luxury goods demanded by the courts of Europe came, ultimately, from the East and, as Spufford notes, it was those mines that made this trade possible.
The book concludes with a summary chapter, trying to estimate the sheer volume of trade in these years, and to analyze the changing patterns of trade. Spufford also recapitulates the themes of the earlier chapters: the importance of the commercial revolution; the importance of increased demand (often overlooked by economic historians studying the era); the problems of infrastructure; the importance of the bulk and luxury trades, which present likenesses between the Italian-based medieval trade and the Netherlands-based trade of the early modern era; and the transmission of nonmaterial goods (and ungoods...).
The book is, as I say, very dense, and the details can be overwhelming, but overall I found it very much worth reading.
The book begins with a discussion of the thirteenth-century "commercial revolution", which saw European economies and populations rise to heights that were to decline again in the crises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and not be regained until the seventeenth or even eighteenth centuries. Spufford points to several factors that made this possible. First and most important is the discovery and exploitation of new lodes of silver and gold, especially in Bohemia; this led to an increase in the amount of coined money in circulation, making it possible for trade to grow as well. (The rise in available bullion was important, since Europe suffered a chronic balance of trade problem with the other major centers of Eurasian civilization. Europe, for the most part, exported raw materials or low-level manufactures in exchange for luxury goods, and the balance had to be made up in silver and gold.) The new volume of trade made it possible for a division of labor within business ventures, between sedentary merchants (staying at home, mostly in northern Italy, and organizing the import-export trade), commercial carriers (either by land or sea), and local agents, full-time resident overseas or beyond the Alps. This is commonplace now, but it was an innovation in medieval Europe, and substantially amplified trade and its benefits. Other consequences of the revolution included new institutions such as the trading company and professional couriers, new techniques in bookkeeping, and the development of insurance and local and international banking.
The second chapter focuses on the demand side of trade; royal and lesser courts, increasingly wealthy, began demanding more and different luxuries. With increased currency available, the barter-and-service economy of feudalism began to break down, and officers of the court came to be paid employees rather than feudatories. They were drawn to the center, and the royal capitals grew in size substantially - the first large cities in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Palaces required building and extension, and also to be decorated; architects, masons, and artists came into greater demand. Where the kings and princes led, nobles and merchants followed, and many of Europe's cities underwent frenzies of building, demolition, and rebuilding. (The cities where medieval architecture, other than churches, is still visible are those which fell into eclipse, such as Avignon after the departure of the papacy. In most other cities, only traces remain.) The growing cities needed to be provisioned as well, and drew upon larger and larger hinterlands for their survival; the money-based economy thus spread into the countryside as well. (The consequences of the latter included monetary taxation and the possibility of eviction of tenants; peasant life became rather less secure in these days, which only added more to the growth of the cities.)
The third, relatively brief, chapter discusses the main arteries of land-based trade, between the great commercial centers in northern Italy and the princely or mercantile cities north of the Alps.
Chapter four discusses "helps and hindrances to trade", including in particular infrastructure. The roads and bridges of the Romans had largely fallen into disrepair after the fall of the western empire, and institutions capable of rebuilding and maintaining them required the re-emergence of sufficient wealth (to rebuild) and continuing commerce (to finance maintenance). Initially, much of this fell to religious bodies; just as the monks of the order of St. Bernard helped merchants and other travelers in the passes of the Alps, so too did orders spring up to deal with ferries and, later, bridges, with roads, upgrading them from mule-tracks to wagon roads, and with inns, hostelries, and (eventually) warehouses. As time passed, this responsibility began to pass to the increasingly wealthy and powerful governments, which also began working on canals and on the suppression of brigandage. (Of course, sometimes the brigands themselves were government agents...)
Next come two chapters on the nature and flow of trade, first in manufactured goods, then in foodstuffs and raw materials. Here Spufford discusses the emergence of major industrial areas - the Low Countries, Tuscany, and later on southern Germany - and the various goods each produced. The changes in production over time, mostly driven by import-substitution, receive attention - the development of a silk industry in Italy, the shift in production of woolens from Flanders to England, and so on. The European grain markets - one covering the Mediterranean, the other in the north - are discussed, and the ways in which they influenced each other. (Famine in the north made it, on occasion, profitable to divert galleys, normally low-capacity luxury carriers, to transporting grain from the Mediterranean to England.) Spices, textiles, and dyestuffs also get their share of attention. (Readers of Dunnett's "House of Niccolo" books will find some of the discussion familiar and interesting.) Along with these come ideas, technologies, artforms - and plagues.
The seventh chapter takes a closer look at balance-of-trade issues, trying to extract information from rather meager data on the flow of precious metals from mines in Central Europe and the Balkans to the great commercial centers and thence, inevitably, eastward, "to Kaffa, Trebizond and Brusa, to Acre, Lajazzo, Beirut and Alexandria, and further still to Damascus, Tabriz, Samarkand and Basra to end up in China or India". The data is thin, but the analysis is vital, since so much of the luxury goods demanded by the courts of Europe came, ultimately, from the East and, as Spufford notes, it was those mines that made this trade possible.
The book concludes with a summary chapter, trying to estimate the sheer volume of trade in these years, and to analyze the changing patterns of trade. Spufford also recapitulates the themes of the earlier chapters: the importance of the commercial revolution; the importance of increased demand (often overlooked by economic historians studying the era); the problems of infrastructure; the importance of the bulk and luxury trades, which present likenesses between the Italian-based medieval trade and the Netherlands-based trade of the early modern era; and the transmission of nonmaterial goods (and ungoods...).
The book is, as I say, very dense, and the details can be overwhelming, but overall I found it very much worth reading.
