Mercantile activity linked to the development of industry and circulation of monetary values it spreads throughout Western Europe having two main focuses: the outline of the North Sea and the peninsula Italian. The expansion of cloth manufacturing ensured prosperity in the northern European focus, which moved to fairs of Champagne the role of regulatory center for commercial traffic in both the North Sea and the peninsula Italian.
The cloth-making workshops are concentrated on the plain of Flanders, where since the ninth century, counts have sought to stimulate economic life. Five fairs were known in the region: Ypres, Bruges, Thourout, Lille and Messines, all of these cities they were industrial cities that had a population of more than 30,000 inhabitants, an exceptional fact for the era.
Production destined for distant export was under the control of merchants capable of acquiring raw material in remote places and guaranteeing the flow of manufactured products.
The progress of Western civilization in the first half of the 14th century was due to the increasing ease of trade relations with the reduction of distances and great intellectual crossroads at the University of Paris, which brought together men from all countries Christians.
During this period, currency and trafficking acquired increasing importance, in an almost exclusively rural world, monarchies were strengthened and confront, announcing economic difficulties and political disagreements that occur parallel to the development of the secular spirit that threatened the cohesion of the Christianity.
The great bourgeois of the 13th and 14th centuries associated themselves with travelers through individual contracts called colleganza. The risks of a trip were evident and, therefore, the date of duration of the trip was uncertain. The merchant-navigator did not have any participation in the capital, being only responsible for multiplying the funds invested in the voyage.
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In fact, business initiatives became the business of the traveler and active partner as a result of the rapid flexibilization of contracts. The deadlines, therefore, could be made by merchants who had the initiative of the business, but who had in a way they were closely linked to the great bourgeois investments that were valued through the fees.
The fairs had holy days as a point of reference and were points of traffic for the entire Christian West, from Italy to the new German colonies of Hansa. The dates of Christian celebrations became, with the expansion of Christianity, a point of reference between the regions of Western Europe that sought to establish Christian cohesion in times of crusade and trade.
The Italians, especially the Florentines, were very successful at the fairs of Bruges, from the 14th century onwards. The boat builders associations in Genoa were responsible for building larger and larger ships capable of carrying various goods to the Damme and Sluice anteports, located in Bruges, which became the main meeting point open to the dealers.
In Florence, the arte di Calimala transformed native and Flemish cloths into luxury items. The bankruptcy of the main Sienese and Luquense houses, after the conquest of Southern Italy by Carlos d'Anjou, guaranteed the astonishing fortune of the Florentine companies. They started to practice financial activities such as transferring funds from one place for the other, trading in gold and loans with interest ranging from 7 to 33 percent, all in mid- 1300.
The evolution of monetary calculations generated the capacity of financial records on the part of the bourgeois, who started to make money multiply by itself through interest. The deadlines established for the payment of the cloths resulted precisely from the cleverness of the bourgeois in self-valuing the invested currency.
Carlos Beto Abdalla
Historian and Master in Literary Studies
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