Salt trade

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The salt trade was historically a long time a trading unit of the highest economic importance. Salt served on the one hand to preserve and season food, and on the other hand in some places as a pre-coinage means of payment ( primitive money ).

Hortus sanitatis , Mainz 1491. Illustration to the chapter Sal - Salt

" You can do without gold , but not salt."

- Cassiodorus

Western and Northern Europe

Extraction

The different salt deposits resulted in two forms of extraction with corresponding techniques. Seacoasts played sea salt and in the mountains, the rock salt the Nutzungsqelle. Sea salt was obtained by damming salty sea water, from which the water was removed through evaporation. Rock salt, on the other hand, was obtained in salt mines , but could be obtained as brine by introducing water into salt domes .

Formerly salt trade

Salt mining and trading have been known in Europe since the Neolithic Age ; in the Eastern Alps, it was mainly extracted in Hallstatt and Hallein . As a commercial good, it had to be distributed from here.

Trade routes and means, capital accumulation

In the 7th century at the latest, salt pans appeared again on the coasts of Europe, such as in Chioggia or Ibiza . Venice increasingly claimed a monopoly in Chioggia, which it extended to the entire Adriatic in the High and Late Middle Ages . Competing salt marshes were rigorously destroyed by Venice . In the Mediterranean region, Genoa appeared as a successful competitor.

In the Hanseatic region , the trade in saline salt became very important. The salt from the Lüneburg saltworks was traded via Lübeck in the entire Baltic Sea and North Sea . The trade route from Lüneburg to Lübeck first ran over the Alte Salzstrasse , later over the Stecknitz Canal, which was built around 1400 . In addition to the roads and waterways with the towpaths , an infrastructure for the salt trade was developed, which consisted of hospitality. The users and transporters united to form trading companies, guilds and guilds.

The need in the middle ages in inland Germany was important for the preservation of herring , which was a popular fasting food . The Lüneburg salt, for example, was in competition with the Baiensalz , which was brought from the French Atlantic coast and the Iberian Peninsula to the Baltic Sea via the hinterland . As sea ​​salt , the Baiensalz was inferior, but at times cheaper despite the long transport routes. In the late Middle Ages, Hanseatic merchants moved ever further south and visited Setúbal in Portugal in the 15th century .

Within Europe, the salt was transported either by horse-drawn vehicle or on ships and, if necessary, stored temporarily in salt stalls . Ships on the Inn had a capacity of up to 65 tons and in the 18th century it was already 125 tons. Elsewhere, ship transport experienced a similar increase. These covered 15 kilometers up the river and up to 40 kilometers down the river per day. In the beginning, day laborers were generally used as hauliers on the opposite journey . Wherever possible - as on the Danube between Passau and Regensburg - horses pulled the ship or ships (salt train).

The trade off the coast of the sea and the navigable rivers was only possible with great effort. Transport by pipelines only played a role at the large production sites; the first brine lines for transporting brine were built from 1595 from Hallstatt to Ebensee and from 1617 from Bad Reichenhall to the brewhouse in Traunstein .

The accumulation of wealth was primarily achieved by the traders and less by the producers. Thus the salt traders from Venice and Cracow, Lübeck and Munich accumulated capital. But also smaller towns became wealthy through the salt trade, such as Lüneburg or Rungholt . The entire social structure of Lüneburg was characterized by salt production and trade and generated considerable amounts of capital. In northern Italy, with its urban population density, salt was used as a means of political blackmail, wars were waged over distribution rights and mining sites.

Monopoly

The salt trade was increasingly viewed as a shelf , a sovereign privilege. The rulers did not exercise this shelf through actual trade, but rather through the starting point of distribution, in which large salt stores were created. Often the shelf was leased to private individuals and noblemen in return for appropriate cash payments. In France, the salt tax , or gabelle in French , became a heavy burden on trade due to subleasing. The residents resisted it with all means, from smuggling to an uprising, for example in the uprising of the Cabochiens in Paris in 1413.

Often there were forced sales, in which the consumers had to purchase certain quantities at fixed prices, in France the corresponding levy was collected directly as part of the stove tax . In Spain, the population around a saltworks only had to get salt from this one. The large salt pans such as Ibiza or Tortosa were responsible for exports, especially to Italy. The entrepreneurs participated in this long-distance trade, such as Francesco Datini , who had a branch in Ibiza.

Because of the high tariffs that had to be paid in different places, the salt transmitters either tried to find other transport routes, as in the Passau salt dispute around 1520. On the other hand, the sovereigns sabotaged foreign transport routes in order to lead the trade routes to their own territory, as when Munich was founded 1158.

While the salt trade was released again in Germany and Austria in the 19th century, the Swiss cantons still have the salt monopoly today.

Place names

Many place names with the name elements Hall (e) and salt testify to the former importance of salt production and the salt trade.

The derivation from Celtic Hall 'salt' that was customary in the past is no longer accepted; a Germanic basis is assumed today . An older interpretation of the Hall names uses Old High German and Old Low German halla , 'building supported by columns, specifically also the boiling house of the salt works'; compare Old High German halhus , 'boiling house of the salt works'. Another, widely accepted derivation is based on Middle High German hal 'salt source'. Examples of such city names are Halle an der Saale , Hallein , Bad Hall , Bad Reichenhall , Schwäbisch Hall or Hallstatt .

The Austrian city of Salzburg got its name from the salt transport on the Salzach and the salt trading center.

America

In America, on the south coast of Belize , researchers discovered nearly forty salt workshops that had been used by the Maya . The flourishing trade often took place by canoe to the densely populated Maya cities in the interior of the country. Presumably the salt trade was not controlled by the state because the salt factories were far away from the destinations.

Archaeological finds of Indian salt works are known in Central America mainly from the Aztecs and Maya and from Colombia , but also from the US states of Louisiana and Kentucky . It is known from the Aztecs that the salt was transported from producers to consumers by porters over land and with dugout canoes.

Asia

The Kingdom of Nepal has no salt deposits of its own. For centuries, the residents' salt needs were met by salt caravans that transported salt from the salt lakes in Tibet through the Himalayas . Because the rivers in the Himalayas were not navigable, yaks , horses, goats and even sheep were used as pack animals to transport salt to Nepal and northern India. Barley and spices were traded as objects of exchange for the salt . This trade route lost its importance with the advent of motorized means of transport for the cheaper Indian sea salt. The transport of salt by yaks and horses from Tibet to Nepal along the Kali Gandaki Gorge is known. An important and ancient place of origin is and was the salt mountains in Punjab (Pakistan). Legend has it that in the Indus Valley, Alexander the Great's horses regained their strength after a strenuous march. These deposits, exploited in the mining and salt springs, were the result of an extensive trading network that was taken over by the British. In India that is salt marsh known, with the Mahatma Gandhi and his followers in an act of civil disobedience , the British salt monopoly broke.

In China there are finds from the 7th century BC on the salt trade. Known. There is also an extensive historical record on salt production, salt trade and salt tax in China. The trade in salt and its price were regulated by the state until 2017. Only the China National Salt Industry Corporation was authorized to sell table salt in China.

Africa

In the West African states of Mali and Niger , camel caravans are still used to transport important commercial goods from the salt pans on the southern edge of the Sahara to consumers in the Sahel . In the Ethiopian Danakil desert, the former salt currency ( amole ) is traditionally broken in the form of plates and also brought into the highlands by camels.

See also

literature

  • Günther Beck : The break up of the traditional salt markets at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. Economic policy causes and reasons for decision. In: Angelika Westermann , Ekkehard Westermann (Hrsg.): Wirtschaftslenkende Montanverwaltung - Princely entrepreneur - Mercantilism. Relationship between the training of a competent civil service and state monetary and economic policy in the early modern period. Matthiesen, Husum 2009, ISBN 978-3-7868-5301-5 , pp. 393-422.
  • Jean-François Bergier : The story of salt. Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1989, ISBN 3-593-34089-5 .
  • Oliver Haid, Thomas Stöllner : Salt, salt production, salt trade. In: Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. 2nd Edition. Volume 26, Berlin / New York 2004, pp. 354–379.
  • Jean-Claude Hocquet: White Gold. Salt and power in Europe from 800 to 1800. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-608-91365-3 .
  • Benjamin Spielmann: drilling, bargaining, politicizing. The salt trade in the canton of Bern in the 19th century (= Bern research on the latest general and Swiss history. Vol. 16). Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2013, ISBN 978-388-30980-2-9 (also: Bern, University, Master's thesis, 2012).
  • International Commission for the History of Salt (Ed.): Journal of Salt-History. = Annales d'Histoire du Sel. = Yearbook for salt history. Publishing house Berenkamp, ​​Schwaz. Volume 1: 1993 ff. ZDB -ID 1172969-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Manfred Niemeyer (ed.): German book of place names. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, under the relevant place names.
  2. ↑ Linda Nestler: The Salt Trade in the Late Chinese Empire . 2013, ISBN 3-656-43354-2 , pp. 32 .
  3. ↑ china.org.cn: China's 2000-year salt monopoly is about to expire from Aus_China.org.cn , accessed on January 3, 2019