Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- 1 Credit in medieval trade
- 2 Private financial instruments in medieval England
- 3 Partnership in English medieval commerce
- 4 The trade of medieval Europe: the North
- 5 The economic and political relations of England and the Hanse from 1400 to 1475
- 6 Economic relations between eastern and western Europe
- 7 Italians and the economic development of England in the Middle Ages
- 8 The medieval wool trade
- 9 English studies of the customs accounts
- Index
2 - Private financial instruments in medieval England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- 1 Credit in medieval trade
- 2 Private financial instruments in medieval England
- 3 Partnership in English medieval commerce
- 4 The trade of medieval Europe: the North
- 5 The economic and political relations of England and the Hanse from 1400 to 1475
- 6 Economic relations between eastern and western Europe
- 7 Italians and the economic development of England in the Middle Ages
- 8 The medieval wool trade
- 9 English studies of the customs accounts
- Index
Summary
Few problems of medieval credit have received more attention from continental historians than that of financial instruments. The medieval tratta (bill of exchange), its origin and diffusion, has been a special favourite with the student, and we now know more about its legal and diplomatic evolution in the Middle Ages than we do of its fortunes in modern times. But this added knowledge has had surprisingly little influence upon the relevant principles of economic history. In spite of the accumulating information the writers of economic history are still apt to represent the technique of medieval credit, especially in the transactions of the non-Italian merchants, not only as something far less elaborate and perfect than the modern technique (which would probably be true) but as its complete antipode: the embodiment of an entirely different economic principle, part of a different, ‘medieval’ order of things. To the present day the teaching of economic history in England conforms to the traditional notion which Cunningham has epitomised in his binomial formula: c dealing for credit was little developed and dealing in credit was unknown'. By ‘dealing in credit’ Cunningham obviously meant the selling and the buying of credit: its transfer and circulation. ‘Though bills were used for transmission of wealth, there is a striking difference between those times and ours in the absence of commercial credit (except what corresponds to book debts) as a basis of transactions of other kinds.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mediaeval Trade and Finance , pp. 28 - 64Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1973
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