122. Methods of trading; factories.—The methods which the Hanseatics employed in their trade are worthy of special attention, because they were characteristic of the time, being very similar to those of the Venetians in the East, and because they have been employed under similar conditions in later periods. They established “factories” in the sense of trading posts (not manufactories), where most of the trade was carried on. A factory was, in the first place, a fortress where the merchants could be safe from attacks by the natives; at Novgorod, for instance, the group of buildings was enclosed and was carefully guarded by men and by great watch-dogs both day and night. The factory was, moreover, a place where the trade could be regulated, and where the merchants could be kept under supervision. To let a man trade as he pleased would have subjected not only himself but all his compatriots to danger, for the natives made little distinction between foreigners and would readily have punished one merchant for the fault of another. The factories were centers of social life, with their rough initiations and their games, and they were useful in training young men in commerce; but they were kept under such strict discipline and minute regulation that they seem like garrisons in the enemy’s country.
The map follows a contemporary description of the wares which were brought for sale to Bruges and Flanders, omitting some of the less important and those difficult to identify. Of the countries left blank on the map, Italy excelled in manufactures (textiles and glass), and France had a notable export trade in wine.
123. Flanders and Bruges.—Between the regions under the commercial control of the Hanseatics on one side and the Venetians on the other lay a sort of neutral zone where both parties met, centering in the region about modern Belgium. This district was favored not only by the junction in it of the northern and southern trade; it had other advantages of position in that it lay near the mouths of great rivers, the Scheldt, Meuse, and Rhine, and was also at the crossing of important land routes. It had enjoyed an early development of industry in its towns, and had been liberally treated by its feudal rulers.
At different periods the great commerce which flowed to and through this district chose different points for its concentration. In the fourteenth century the favored spot was Bruges (the Flemish word meaning bridges), the greatest market in northern Europe, vying even with Venice. Here could be found Scandinavians, Germans, English, French, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Italians, exchanging the wares from different sources; a contemporary writer names 30 different countries, both Christian and Mohammedan, which fed the market of Bruges with their commodities. The natives were content to let foreigners carry on the business of transportation; they stayed at home and grew rich from the wares, money and credit instruments which commerce brought to their doors.
124. Decline of Bruges in the fifteenth century; rise of Antwerp.—Partly because of this passive part which they assumed, partly because of the practice of medieval countries in diverting their trade from one place to another, the people of Bruges had but a precarious hold on their commerce, and lost it in the fifteenth century. The silting up of its harbors, making these unfit to hold the larger ships now coming into use, explains in part the decline of Bruges, but political forces were at work also to divert commerce to another center. In the fifteenth century the place of Bruges as the great market of northern Europe was taken by Antwerp, which had fought its way up against all rivals, and which held the leadership now for one hundred years.
125. Conditions of commerce in England.—England lay on the outside of the great currents of medieval commerce. It had an advantage which it had enjoyed since pre-Roman times, the practical monopoly of tin production in Europe; and added to this in the latter part of the Middle Ages a still more important monopoly, that of wool production. Sheep were raised, of course, in other parts of Europe, and the merinos of Spain yielded a finer grade of wool than could be produced in England. For some reason, however, the sheep industry did not prosper elsewhere as it did in England. Possibly the constant wars and raids which disturbed the feudal states of the continent may have prevented the production of a commodity which could be so easily destroyed or carried off as booty. At any rate, the more settled political conditions in England, where internal war became soon a rare exception, favored the development of all the national resources. Aided by the prevalence of peace at home, and by the disappearance of feudal tolls on trade, the English advanced rapidly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and instead of exporting the raw wool began to make it into cloth and to export the finished product. Trade was furthered also by the continental conquests of English kings, which brought England and the South of France into close relationship, and built up a large import trade in French wines.
126. English trade passive until the close of the Middle Ages.—Most of the trade in English wares, however, was in the hands of foreigners until the very close of the Middle Ages. The English kings showed more interest in the development of their resources by the encouragement of alien merchants than they showed in the extension of commerce carried on by natives. Hanseatics and Venetians fetched and carried the wares of distant countries for the English; and the “Merchants of the Staple,” a society composed largely of aliens, enjoyed a legal monopoly of the export of the most important raw materials which England supplied to European commerce—wool and sheepskins, leather, tin, and lead.
English merchants became restive in the inferior position assigned to them both at home and abroad, and before the end of the Middle Ages began to fight for equal rights or for privileges, but they did not secure final and complete victory until the beginning of the modern period, in the sixteenth century.
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