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Steep Fall or Gradual Decline? International Trade in Sixteenth-Century Bruges

Boekbijdrage - Hoofdstuk

At the end of the fifteenth century, the commercial centre of North-Western Europe shifted from the Flemish city of Bruges, which had been the area’s leading market since the beginning of the fourteenth century, to Antwerp, in Brabant. While the former metropolis had only ever functioned as a hub for European trade or even as a gateway for international merchants to the Low Countries’ domestic market, the latter established itself as the first capital of a quickly expanding global economy, spanning four different continents. Older generations of historians considered the transition from Bruges to Antwerp as sudden and definitive, completed by the early sixteenth century. More recently, however, scholars have questioned the chronology and the linearity of the shift. Some, for example, have highlighted the continuation of certain aspects of international trade in Flanders after the late fifteenth century. This paper draws on an underused source in this respect, the records of civil litigation before the city’s aldermen, to interrogate to what extent Bruges still was a centre of international commercial activity in the course of the sixteenth century.
Boek: Italien als Vorbild? Ökonomische und kulturelle Verflechtungen europäischer Metropolen am Vorabend der 'ersten Globalisierung' (1300-1600)
Pagina's: 153-162
Aantal pagina's: 10
ISBN:978-3-7954-3449-6
Jaar van publicatie:2019