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1. BasicsAn outgrowth of a storage right in a natural trading center (Trade), the right of staple had already become a mandatory requirement by the high Midde Ages: traveling merchants were required to “staple” (i.e. store) their goods at a specific place – often a river crossing or a crossroads – for a specific length of time and offer them for sale to the local population. This could be accompanied by the obligation to sell the goods at that place and no other – a privilege that the Hanseatic L…

Regional trade comprises commercial activities occurring, geographically speaking, between the two poles of the essentially local confines of the retail trade and the long-distance trade over substantial distances (Trade, Long-distance). It therefore denotes the trade within a single economic region, or between two or more regions, as often limited by the available (preindustrial) transportation possibilities (Traffic and transport). Merchants often specialized in regional trade when …

Traditionally a counting-house has been understood as the scriptorium or shop (in modern language, the office) of medieval and early modern merchants. The term goes back to French  comptoir (“counter,” from Latin  computare, “count,” “calculate”), which suggests an original reference to a table or desk used for writing or trading. The counting-house became a central feature of commercial activity in the high Middle Ages, when merchants no longer traveled with their merchandise but settled in one place. With increasing literac…

1. Definition and formsThe term  interest (French  intérêt; see  Interest), in earlier Latin sources often called  interesse, contrasts with German  Zins – from Latin  census, “valuation (of wealth),” “tribute.” Until well into the 18th century, it meant compensation for both the loan of money or movables (Loan for consumption [mutuum]) and the use of land or immovables (lease or rent interest, ground rent, rent charge; see Peasant property rights; Services, peasant), later it normally meant only the former (see also…

1. StocksThe term  share denotes the legal relationship between the shareholder and the joint stock company. The share represents both a fraction of the original capital and an equity interest on the part of the shareholder. Today, the share documents both property rights (e.g. entitlement to earnings, subscription rights) and administrative rights (e.g. voting rights). The form of participation through shares was invented by the Netherlands East India Company in 1602 (East India companies). The fi…

The term commercial revolution was introduced by Raymond de Roover in 1942 [2]; it is used in studies of economic history for epochal changes relating to the history of trade, when commercial innovations were concentrated in a short space of time, thus triggering an advance in the long-term development of trade. De Roover set the commercial revolution of the Middle Ages in the 13th century, while modern scholars prefer to speak of a period from the late 12th century to the 14th. During the medieval commer…

1. Historical terminologyThe term trading cycle denotes both short-term and long-term fluctuations in the business volume of individual markets and the trading volume between markets, including both goods and financial instruments. Economists frequently considered (and consider) the pre-industrial period as a “prologue to business cycles” (see Industrial cycle [business cycle]) [2. 134]. At least until the 1950s, this was “characterized as a history of crises, which it was widely believed – usually as commercial crises – at a precapitalist st…

1. DefinitionImport is the portion of external trade (Trade, external) that involves the transfer of goods from a foreign economic area into one’s own and the related services (warehousing, dispatch, etc.); it is thus complementary to export.Markus A. Denzel2. RestrictionsAn import ban or embargo is a government decree prohibiting (for example) the import of raw materials, foodstuffs, manufactured goods, or luxuries. Such bans have been common since antiquity, especially vis-à-vis hostile nations, but it was not until the era of mercantilism that they became an…

1. Definition and functionAn endorsement is a signature written on the back (Italian, in dosso or in dorso) of a bill of exchange that entitles a person not previously involved in the bill to present it for payment. The endorsement effectively transferred the demand for payment derived from the bill to another person, which the signature written  in dosso confirmed. By means of endorsement, bills of exchange became a circulable form of paper currency. Like the bill of exchange itself (at the latest since the early 15th century), the endorsement devel…

1. General“Pedlary is a form of commercial enterprise in which the tradesman goes from place to place outside his own domicile peddling goods he has brought with him (actual pedlary), offering certain commercial services (scissors grinders, tinkers, etc.), or buying up goods (collecting rags, bones, scrap metal)” [1]; cited from [11. 101]. We can distinguish – in towns (town peddlers) and rural areas – so-called “direct peddlers” (German  Selbsthausierer) who sold the products of their own farm or their secondary occupation (Industrial trades and crafts) and …

Commodity trading was the original form and function of the bourse. Since the early 15th century, people traded fungible commodities like grain, coffee, sugar, and spices sight unseen, but also bills of exchange and securities of all kinds. Unlike trade fairs, for example, bourse trading took place throughout the year and was concentrated in space and time – the participating merchants, who in many cases were governed by specific statutes, assembled in a particular place at scheduled times. Depe…

1. Definition and evolutionPrice lists, that is, formalized lists of prices or rate sheets, hand-written and later printed, constituted the earliest type of trade and financial journal; each consisted of just one or two pages. Such price lists are a major source for price quotations, demand quotations, and exchange rate quotations on the European and Levantine markets from the late 16th century to the 19th. As a rule, price lists are dated precisely and therefore provide exact information about wha…

1. Europe The term  factory was much more common in Europe in the high and late Middle Ages than in the early modern period. The Italian word  fattoria, the etymon of the loanword, first appears in connection with the great Tuscan trading companies of the high Middle Ages; it denoted a fortified outpost or “branch” of a trading company in a foreign commercial center, headed by a factor (Italian  fattore) [6]. The network of factories of the great South German companies (Fugger family; Welser) with permanent offices in the major European commercial centers (A…

1. PrinciplesBefore the advent of social insurance in the second half of the 19th century (see Old age, provision for; Pension), an annuity rent was a payment occurring at regular intervals to a recipient having transferred an amount of capital (principal sum), but not land (land rent; socage), to a third party. It thus to an extent corresponded to interest paid on the capital (but did not count towards paying off a debt), and therefore constituted an important instrument for avoiding the prohibition on usury (see also Interest [banking]).Three main types of annuity rent are d…

1. Rise of the dynasty up to the 16th century The Fuggers of Augsburg were among the most famous of entrepreneurs doing business in the German area in the early modern era. In 1367, Hans Fugger immigrated to Augsburg and set himself up as a fustian weaver and merchant; his son Jakob I. Fugger, founder of the “Fuggers of the lily” branch of the family, was primarily known as a business magnate. His son Jakob II (nicknamed “the Rich”) was the one who created a Europe-wide enterprise from those comparatively…

1. General The term payment transactions refers to the organization of the fulfillment of promises to pay, which customarily are made in the course of commercial transactions. Before the emergence of national payment systems, especially in the course of the development of central banks (see Bank of issue; cf. 4.3. below), payment transactions usually took place directly between individual commercial centers with their own financial services; governmental and political boundaries were irrelevant.Markus A. Denzel2. Payment in kindPayment in kind, that is, payment for …

Export is the portion of external trade that entails the delivering of goods from the home economic zone into another (foreign) one, and the services connected with this process (warehousing, dispatch, etcetera; on the details, see Trade, external).The export of goods was subject to a range of official regulations in the early modern period, primarily prohibitions. A prohibition on export was an official ban on the export of goods regarded as strategically important, such as weapons, raw materials, foodstuffs, manufactured or lux…

1. TerminologyThe term  duty (German  Zoll, from Late Latin  teloneum/ telonium, “toll house, customs house”) denotes a fee levied when goods are transported across a customs boundary – whether within a state (internal tariff) or between two states (external tariff). Internal tariffs were levied primarily in situations where bypassing a customs stations would have been very expensive or impossible for the dealer or carrier. In land transport, this took place at major bridges (bridge toll), fords, tunnels…

1. The concept of professionThe term “profession” (from Latin professio, “public acknowledgment,” “public register,” hence “business publicly avowed”; Industrial trades and crafts; Profession) was adopted in the Romance languages and Middle English, then in German in the 16th century. It has never denoted all occupations, but invariably a specific set of them, the spectrum varying from one European cultural sphere to another. Early modern and contemporary English tends to reserve the term for academic, …

In the 12th and 13th centuries, as a consequence of the commercial revolution economic and trade activity increased sharply, the money economy began to take hold (once more), and new techniques were developed for trade and payment transactions (see Bill of exchange); as a result, the need for communication between merchants increased substantially. Now, however, they no longer communicated primarily orally in the course of personal meetings; with the emergence of the settled counting-house merch…