The fairs

The great international fairs began in the second half of the twelfth century. There were six mature fair systems in the thirteenth century: in northern Italy, England, Flanders, Champagne, and the lower and middle Rhine. Further east and south, fair systems were developing that would assume many of the same functions for the economic development of those areas in the fourteenth century that the older ones provided for the West in the thirteenth. The fairs received privileges from princes, which specified times of the year and duration of the fairs, the ‘infrastructure’ such as inns, security arrangements for transient traders, and a ‘clear hierarchy of market opportunities’ in the region of the fair, where merchants visiting them could also trade without being required to go through the intermediary of local brokers. Most fairs were in or on the edge of areas producing exportable crafts or raw materials. They were thus an intermediate stage between the diffused commercial networks of the early Middle Ages and the situation after the early fourteenth century, when most exchange took place in centrally located cities that served as successors to the fairs.25

The Flemish fairs are mentioned early, and by 1200 a cycle of five fairs, each lasting thirty days, was held every two months between the end of February and the beginning of November; wool and cloth were the main products sold. Intervals of two to four weeks between the fairs permitted merchants visiting them to return home or visit 25 F. Irsigler, ‘Jahrmarkte und Messesysteme im westlichen Reichsgebiet bis ca. 1250’, in P. Johanek and H. Stoob (eds.), Europaische Messen und Marktesysteme in Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Cologne, 1996), 12-13, including quotation.

Other fairs. Obligations incurred at the Flemish fairs could be paid at a later fair in the cycle or at one of the Champagne fairs. The Flemish fairs declined only when Bruges became a year-round market at the end of the thirteenth century. Similarly the English fairs were creations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The regional fairs handled mainly agricultural goods, but six (Winchester, Boston, Bury St Edmunds, St Ives, Northampton, and Stamford) were held for several weeks at a time and served as places where foreign merchants could deal with local producers without having to visit the countless village markets. The English fairs, too, developed credit mechanisms with deferred payments in the cycle that were similar to what the Champagne fairs provided on an international scale. The foreigners generally bought wool and sold luxuries.26

The famous Champagne fairs originated as local agrarian marts, then were transformed around 1175 when the count of Champagne gave privileges to foreigners. At precisely this time, when the supply of money was increasing rapidly, Italians began visiting the fairs, and Flemish and northern French cloth began its conquest of the luxury market. Six fairs were held, lasting six weeks each, in four places (two each at Provins and Troyes, each of which produced cloth for export, and one each in Lagny and Bar-sur-Aube, which did not). During intervals between the fairs merchants could return home with their acquisitions or visit a regional fair before returning for one of the later fairs of the trading season.

Although most merchants who visited the fairs were transients, the Italian cities established consulates for their resident colonies in the fair cities, which from 1278 chose a single captain to handle their relations with outsiders; the Provencal and Languedoc merchants quickly followed suit. Italian merchant banking houses had offices in the fair cities, and contracts that were engaged elsewhere were often paid at one of these branches. The Flemish merchants had an interurban Hanse of the Seventeen Towns, but it lacked the firm organization of the Italians. Some Italians remained permanently in Champagne and intermarried with the local urban elites. Terricus Teutonicus, a Cologner who settled at Stamford, was there primarily for the cloth trade, but he was also involved in beer brewing and in Britnell, Commercialisation of English Society, 89-90.

The wool, spice, and horse trades, and he owned a London wine cellar and considerable property at Stamford.27

Since the Italians at the fairs were buying mainly English wool and Flemish cloth but were selling spices, cotton, and other eastern luxuries, northern Europe in the thirteenth century had an adverse balance of payments with Italy. Until the development of negotiable instruments in the thirteenth century, northern merchants had to take silver in addition to their goods to the fairs, since they were buying a greater value of goods than they sold. This was obviously dangerous and inconvenient. Thus the fairs had a pioneering role in the development of new commercial techniques. Money-changing was an important part of their business. Notarial instruments, promissory notes payable at a later fair, and book transfers were used to facilitate exchange transactions. The ‘fair letter’ amounted to a negotiable promissory note that acknowledged one merchant’s debt to another, payable at a later fair in the annual cycle. The last fair of the year, at Troyes, became a clearing house, but obligations could be carried across years. A ‘court of the fairs’ adjudicated debt litigation and developed a generally applicable merchant law. If a debtor refused to accept its jurisdiction or refused to pay and his home town or state protected him, the officials of the court could interdict not only the offender but also his fellow citizens from selling and buying at the fairs. Their goods could be seized for up to the value of his debt.