Champagne fairs

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Une foire en Champagne au XIIIe siècle (A fair in Champagne in the 13th century), engraving in Album historique, publié sous la direction de M. Ernest Lavisse (1898), Paris, Armand Colin & Cie

The Champagne fairs were an annual cycle of

medieval Europe, "veritable nerve centers"[2] serving as a premier market for textiles, leather, fur, and spices. At their height, in the late 12th and the 13th century, the fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers, with Genoa in the lead,[3][4][5] dominating the commercial and banking relations operating at the frontier region between the north and the Mediterranean.[citation needed] The Champagne fairs were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages.[6]

The towns

Map of France in 1154

The towns in which the six fairs of the annual circuit were held had some features in common, but none that would have inexorably drawn the commerce of the fairs: each was situated at an intersection or former way-station of

Benedictine monastery. The self-interest and the political will of the Counts of Champagne was the over-riding factor.[7]

Organization

The series of six fairs, each lasting more than six weeks, were spaced through the year's calendar: the fair of

All Saint's Day (that is, on 2 November). Each fair began with the entrée of eight days during which merchants set up, followed by the days allotted for the cloth fair, the days of the leather fair, and the days for the sale of spices and other things sold by weight (avoirdupois). In the last four-day period of the fairs, accounts were settled.[8]

In actual practice, arrivals and departures were more flexible and efficient, relying on flexibly formed and dissolved partnerships, which freed the "silent" partners from actually undertaking the arduous journey on each occasion, delegated agents (certi missi) who could receive payment and undertake contracts, and factors, integrated with communications and transportation, and the extensive use of

credit instruments in the trade.[9]

The towns provided huge warehouses, still to be seen at

Reaching the Champagne fairs

To cross the

Dominance and decline

The fairs were also important in the spread and exchange of cultural influences—the first appearance of Gothic architecture in Italy was the result of merchants from Siena rebuilding their houses in the Northern style.[14] The phrase "not to know your Champagne fairs" meant not knowing what everyone else did.[15]

It was in the interest of the

Philip Augustus granted safe conduct within France to merchants traveling to and from the Champagne fairs, increasing their international importance.[17]

Traditional historians have dated the decline of the Champagne fairs to the subordination of Champagne to the Royal Domain brought about by the marriage alliance of

black plague took a toll also. Around the same time, a series of wars in Italy, most significantly the conflicts between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, disrupted the overland trade routes that connected the Italian cities with France, and Genoese and Venetian merchants opened up direct sea trade with Flanders, diminishing the importance of the fairs.[4][21] Fernand Braudel also saw the decline as due to the increasing sophistication of communications and distance credit, changing the medieval merchant from a person engaged in constant arduous travel to one who mostly controlled his affairs by correspondence.[22][23]

As the Champagne fairs dwindled to insignificance, their place was assumed by the fairs of

Frankfurt-am-Main, of Geneva and, more locally, of Lyon.[24]

Notes

  1. ^ Longnon, Auguste (1911). "Champagne" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 828.
  2. ^ M. M. Postan, E Miller eds., Cambridge Economic History of Europe, (Cambridge University Press) 1952, vol. ii, p. 230
  3. ^ R. L. Reynolds, "The market for northern textiles in Genoa, 1179–1200", Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 8.3 (1929:495–533); Reynolds, "Merchants of Arras and the overland trade with Genoa in the twelfth century", Revue belge 9.2 (1930:495–533); Reynolds, "Genoese trade in the late twelfth century, particularly in cloth from the fairs of Champagne", Journal of Economic and Business History 3.3 (1931:362–81).
  4. ^ , pp. 231–36.
  5. ^ , pp. 65–66
  6. ^ https://mises.org/library/great-depression-14th-century "During the High Middle Ages, the fairs of Champagne were the main mart for international trade, and the hub of local and international commerce."
  7. ^ This point was made by Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 "The Fairs of Champagne and Their Towns" (Oxford University Press US) 1991, pp. 55ff: "certainly there were many other modest bourgs, scattered throughout France, whose characteristics were equally propitious for development".
  8. ^ R. D. Face, "Techniques of Business in the Trade between the Fairs of Champagne and the South of Europe in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries", The Economic History Review, New Series, 10.3 (1958:427–38) p. 427 note 2.
  9. ^ These aspects form the tenor of Face 1958.
  10. ^ Paul R. Milgrom, Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, "The role of institutions in the revival of trade: the law merchant, private judges and the Champagne fairs", in Kaushik Basu, ed. Readings in Political Economy 2003:68ff.
  11. ^ Huvelin, "Les couriers des foires de Champagne", Annales de Droit Commercial Français Étranger et International (Paris) 1898, noted by Face 1958.
  12. ^ Face 1958:435.
  13. ^ Braudel, Vol 3, p. 66
  14. ^ Braudel, Vol 3, p. 111
  15. ^ Cambridge Economic History of Europe ii, 230.
  16. ^ , p. 27
  17. ^ Janet L. Abu-Lughod p. 58.
  18. ^ Rothbard, Murray (23 November 2009). "The Great Depression of the 14th Century". Mises Daily Articles. Mises Institute. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
  19. ^ Abu-Lughod p. 58.
  20. ^ Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700 (London, 1994), p. 202.
  21. ^ Fernand Braudel, "Civilization & Capitalism, 15–18th Centuries, Vol 1: The Structures of Everyday Life", p. 419, William Collins & Sons, London 1981
  22. ; p. 265
  23. ^ Clive Day, A History of Commerce (London: Longmans, Green) 1914) "Fairs" pp. 65–67 and map p. 66.