Regional and interregional trading networks and commercial practices at the port of Antwerp in the 14th and 15th centuries. The testimony of merchants and skippers in court records

Abstract

In the 14th and 15th centuries Antwerp was a port of considerable dimensions and commercial importance. The Brabant fairs of Bergen op Zoom and Antwerp were a major meeting point for merchants from the Low Countries, the Rhineland and England from the fourteenth century onwards. This article gives a short synthesis of the existing literature on the earliest period of the commercial history of Antwerp, little of which has been published in English so far, and map the commercial activity in Antwerp in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the trade with the staple goods grain, fish and salt. The testimonies related to the litigation concerning the staple between Antwerp and the towns of Brussels and Mechlin in the early fifteenth century provide detailed information concerning the destinations, traded products as well as trading practices and strategies, so that a picture of the commercial networks and practices of Antwerp during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century can be established which is complementary to the older historiography concerning the international trade at the Antwerp fairs.

Keywords

• trading networks
• commerce
• port
• Antwerp
• medieval trade