Commercial revolution

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Map of the Maritime Republics
The Moneylender and His Wife by Quentin Massys (1514)
A model insurance contract. Documents like these helped traders survive losses.

The commercial revolution is a technical term in economic history that is not used uniformly and has not been clearly defined in terms of phases . It summarizes the process of developing and establishing new forms of cashless payment and capital-based institutions such as banks , stock exchanges or limited partnerships from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance , which developed on the basis of long-distance trade in Europe , but also refers to new political institutions that existed in this Connection emerged.

term

Karl Polanyi probably first used the term commercial revolution in his 1944 book The Great Transformation . Roberto Sabatino Lopez used it in 1955 to divert attention away from the industrial revolution in England and focus on the Middle Ages. He denied the continuity of development from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The greatest advances in economic development occurred between 950 and 1300, that is, in the High Middle Ages ; In contrast, the renaissance was more of a phase of stagnation. Henri Pirenne does not speak of a commercial revolution, but of a renaissance commerciale in the 11th century.

course

Due to the decline processes in late antiquity , the merchant class disappeared in Europe. Trade collapsed in the early Middle Ages because there were neither regional and supra-regional sales markets nor an urban civilization worth mentioning. According to the previously widespread opinion (represented by Henri Pirenne, among others), it took almost 300 years before the first Christian crusade of 1096 ushered in a turning point. Before that, the rulership of the sea in the Mediterranean was in the hands of pirates and Muslim peoples, whose potential threats limited Christian sea trade. According to Pirenne and many other authors, the now possible maritime trade was the key to faster and cheaper movement of goods.

In fact, Venice had been trading with the Orient since the 8th century, delivering salt and slaves there. At the beginning of the 9th century Venice then opened its own mint for coins, the Zecca , in which gold coins, the zecchins , were also minted from 1284 . The city was already privileged in trade with the Byzantine Empire in exchange for military service in 992 , but lost these privileges in 1171 because the Byzantines felt threatened by competition and the merchants were driven out or killed.

The Italian port cities, and to a lesser extent those of Provence and Catalonia , recaptured control of the Mediterranean from the Arabs in the 11th to 13th centuries. As a junction between the eastern markets and continental Europe, Venice secured the monopoly of goods traffic with the Holy Land even before the first crusade . Traders from Northern Europe bought goods imported from North Africa, Persia and India in Venice. From the fourth crusade at the latest , the city gained control of the Bosporus and took the place of the Byzantine Empire in trade with the Orient . The changed balance of power in the Mediterranean region and the strategic location of the Italian city-states were the prerequisites for the synchronous flourishing of long-distance trade , money and credit in this region. Italy developed into a hub between the Middle East and the markets of the Baltic Sea trade and North Sea trade, which were dominated by the Hanseatic League .

Many Italian traders no longer traveled to the trade fairs in a trade caravan , but instead settled in local offices in the production areas. There were also factors in the sales markets that bought and sold locally. New forms of business partnerships, bookkeeping and payment transactions were necessary due to the sharp rise in sales. Long-term trading partnerships were established between merchants, resulting in long-lasting trading companies . Ship loads could also be insured against loss. The rising trade profits led to the emergence of large capital-based trading companies, a process that only reached Germany with some delay.

New forms of payment, credit and accounting

As early as the 11th century there were written payment orders that were given orally and recorded in a bank book. As a result of the merchants' needs for simpler forms of payment, a form of credit was created that made the transport of coins partially superfluous. Upon receipt of goods, the recipient gave the supplier a letter of exchange . It worked like the check later and guaranteed the right to receive the agreed purchase price at a certain time and place either from the bill issuer himself or from a third party. The bill of exchange as a promise to pay was transferable and tradable. It is a form of modern cashless payment transactions that began on a large scale in the 14th century. Maritime trading companies also emerged in which the traveling merchant, who bore the greater risk, contributed only the smaller part of the capital.

Innsbruck Handlungsbuch (“Raitbuch”) from 1489/90 with notes on the issue side

Systematic bookkeeping has been necessary at the latest since the establishment of capital-based companies . The church's influence initially prevented the existing interest rate ban from being lifted, in fact it was even tightened so that the banks limited themselves to trade finance and alternative forms of business such as buying bonds had to be found to circumvent interest collection. The lending of money was left to the Jews until around 1500. However, the interest prohibition was perforated more and more and the systematic interest calculation developed in the 17th century.

Commercial specialization and urbanization

The rapidly expanding long-distance trade led to strong growth and diversification of the primarily agrarian economic structure in the western cultural area . Specialized and concentrated industrial regions such as the cloth industry in Flanders emerged. This promoted urbanization , the wealthy urban middle classes developed and the European population grew rapidly. A forerunner of the commercial register were the profession-specific entries in guild books . The guild obligation ensured transparency and limited competition. Property rights were also strengthened; a commercial law developed . However, the development towards early capitalism was slowed down by famine in north-western Europe and the plague epidemic around 1350.

Competing explanations

Other authors such as Jacques Le Goff or Georges Duby , in contrast to Pirenne or Lopez, do not raise trade, but rather the earlier (around 950) generation of an agricultural surplus through new cultivation methods such as three-field farming , water mills and more productive iron tools (the so-called révolution agricole ). Duby attributed this surplus, which can first be found between the Loire and the Rhine , but not in the Mediterranean, also to the increasing pressure of the feudal lords and the reclamation of barren areas. This development is considered to be the cause of the increase in population (albeit partly unexplained to this day) and the associated division of labor as a further driver of economic development. Between 1000 and 1300 Europe's population almost doubled, which was not a result of the development of long-distance trade, but rather its prerequisite as a result of the intensified urban-rural exchange. An increasingly humid climate contributed to the increase in agricultural surpluses, the so-called Medieval climate anomaly from 950 to 1250 with a temperature 1.5 to 2 ° C higher than the mean temperature between 1000 and 1800. At that time, viticulture was possible in England, forests in Central Europe were cleared and replaced by fields, fig and olive trees found good growing conditions in parts of Germany and the Vikings colonized Greenland . Around 1350/1400, the so-called Little Ice Age began, which was accompanied by summer droughts.

Many of the founding of trading cities in northwest, northern and eastern Europe up to 1200 had little to do with the oriental trade of the Italian cities, which mainly concerned luxury goods, but resulted from the long-distance trade activities of the Vikings , Varangians and Normans . By far the largest and most important city of the Middle Ages was Paris , which in the 13th century had more than 100,000 inhabitants, but did not participate in Mediterranean trade. Wheat and other products from the French territories with agricultural surpluses, fish, cloth and furs were traded here, but the concentration of capital resulted mainly from the function of the capital.

Trade routes of the Varangians in the 8th – 11th / 12th centuries Century: Volga route (red), Baltic Sea-Greece route (orange)

Alfons Dopsch criticized the thesis of a catastrophic collapse of late antiquity, as represented by Pirenne, and emphasized the continuity to the Carolingian period and beyond. The Arab traveler al-Masʿūdī reported before the year 950 that there were 150 cities in the Frankish Empire that lived from trade and handicrafts. Lopez also criticized the Pirenne thesis that Islamic expansion had led to the collapse of long-distance trade in the Mediterranean region. Some authors rate the influence of the Islamic Arab world on the business practices of medieval Italy much more positively. So existed with a turnstile in Baghdad and one in Byzantium since 8/9. In the 19th century there was brisk Arab trade from Malacca and India to Andalusia, with Eastern and Northern Europe to the Baltic Sea and, since the 11th century, with Venice and Amalfi, which was not affected by the Crusades. Jews and Christians also took part. The Arabic trading techniques were to be called advanced compared to the medieval European techniques. Verbal contracts only applied to local business; Written contracts were concluded in long-distance trade. For example, the limited partnership agreement comes from Arab traders. The Islamic currency system of gold and silver was also used at times throughout Europe. The coin contents of the Muslims were considered pure and thus stood for the trust that Europeans had in Islamic trading practices. The highly developed Islamic system of guilds prevailed in all cities in Europe. Its main principles such as the prohibition of monopoly formation and usury were not adopted here.

Dating

The literature also disagrees on the dating of the commercial revolution. For England it is usually set much later, namely in the 14th to 17th centuries, with state guarantees of national trade and monopolies, but also trade wars, playing a greater role. The period is characterized by the development of mercantilism , through chartered companies with state monopolies on shares such as B. Merchant Adventurers , through foreign branches in Flanders and Germany, through the establishment of state central banks in various countries and the trading of futures on the stock exchange. The Orient played no essential role in British trade, but trade with Russia and Flanders was highly profitable.

Legal development and political institutions

The commercial revolution also contributed to political and legal changes. One of the most important innovations was the legal recognition and protection of the merchant class. So the dealers had to be able to move freely. Contract law also developed under the influence of the rediscovered Roman law . The Counts of Champagne had guaranteed the property rights of all trade fair visitors since the middle of the 11th century . Since 1170 there has been a public legal supervisory authority for the settlement of trade disputes. The counts even gave loan guarantees.

City ordinances were later enacted to protect local traders from competition. Dealer associations and guilds also created their own dispute settlement institutions such as market courts.

In Venice, under pressure from long-distance traders, the de facto hereditary status of the Doge's office was abolished in 1032. In 1172 a kind of parliament in the form of the Grand Council was established here. But after just 200 years, this process of democratization came to a standstill and a small oligarchy of traders gained dominant influence and restricted competition, causing retail trade to suffer and wealth inequality to rise. Since 1323, membership in the Grand Council became hereditary. In Genoa , the process of oligarchization led to considerable political instability.

In other countries too, such as India, the development of long-distance trade since the 14th century had led to the formation of new economic and political institutions and initially had a positive and conflict-reducing effect on the multi-religious society.

The American legal scholar Amalia Kessler starts the commercial revolution in France in the 18th century with the emergence of modern commercial law and the establishment of a commercial court, which has fueled credit-based trade considerably. At the same time, these forms of institutionalizing the balance of interests would have promoted corporatism and contributed to the French Revolution .

"Révolution commerciale" in France

In France, the introduction of supermarkets and hypermarkets in the 1950s to 1970s was described as a commercial revolution that ended retail trade.

Philippe Moati speaks of a "new (digital) commercial revolution", which is characterized above all by the provision of individually configured products and personalized services.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael North: A Little History of Money: From the Middle Ages to Today, CH Beck, 2009, p. 28.
  2. ^ Karl Polanyi; The Great Transformation, Boston 1944.
  3. ^ Roberto Sabatino Lopez: Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World , ed. with Irving W. Raymond. 1955, 2nd edition 1969. New edition Columbi UP, 2001.
  4. ^ Henri Pirenne: La civilization occidentale au Moyen Âge du XIe au milieu du XVe siècle. Paris 1933.
  5. ↑ Rainer Traub: The Lords of Gold. In: Der Spiegel, May 30, 2012.
  6. ^ Rainer Traub: The commercial revolution. In: Der Spiegel , 4/2009.
  7. ↑ Michael North: A Little History of Money: From the Middle Ages to Today , CH Beck, Munich 2009, p. 29
  8. ^ Robert Lopez: The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350. Cambridge UP, 1976.
  9. ^ Georges Duby: La révolution agricole médiévale. In: Revue de geographie de Lyon , vol. 29, n ° 4, 1954, pp. 361-366.
  10. ↑ Nicolas Wieske, 2011.
  11. ↑ Gernot Rotter (transl.): Al-Mas'ûdî: Up to the limits of the earth. Munich 1988.
  12. ↑ Maurice Lombard: The heyday of Islam. Frankfurt 1992.
  13. ^ Gertraude Mikl-Horke: Historical sociology of the economy: Economy and economic thinking in the past and present. Berlin, New York 2015, p. 315 ff.
  14. ↑ Adbalaziz Duri: Arab economic history. Zurich, Munich 1979, new edition Munich 1988, especially p. 101.
  15. ↑ Commercial Revolution. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved February 15, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Harold J. Berman : Law and Revolution, I: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Harvard UP, 1983, reprint 1990.
  17. ↑ Sheilagh Ogilvie, AW Carus: Public-Order Institutions and the Champagne Fairs , in: Handbook of Economic Growth , Volume 2, 2014, pp 403-513.
  18. ↑ Nathan Nunn, Daniel Trefler: Domestic Institutions as a source of comparative advantage , in: Handbook of International Economics , Volume 4, 2014, pp 263-315.
  19. ^ Amalia D. Kessler: A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Yale University Press, New Haven 2007.
  20. ↑ Jacques Marseille (Ed.): La révolution commerciale en France: Du Bon marché à l'hypermarché. Editions Le Monde, 1997.
  21. ^ Philippe Moati: La Nouvelle Révolution commerciale , Odile Jacob, 2010.