New types of fi nancial organization also played a role in this commercial expansion.
In the fi fteenth century, the most important European banks were run by Italian
merchants in Florence, Venice, and Genoa. They loaned money to individuals and
governments, issued maritime insurance on overseas voyages, speculated in foreign
exchange, and accepted deposits of coins. Deposit banks with similar functions became
common in major cities, but they often made speculative loans and frequently
failed. These failures led to the creation of public banks, overseen by government
offi cials, of which the fi rst was the Taula de Canvi of Barcelona, founded in 1401. In
the middle of the sixteenth century, Naples and Palermo founded public banks, and
the northern Italian cities soon followed; those in Genoa were specifi cally designed
to handle the gold and silver coming in from the Spanish New World. Public banks
were opened in Amsterdam and other Dutch and north German cities in the early
seventeenth century, and gradually took over more and more business from private
merchant banks.
Though both private and public banks issued various forms of paper bills of
exchange and statements of deposit, most business in the fi fteenth and sixteenth
centuries was carried out with coins – gold fl orins or ducats or écus or nobles for
the large transactions of nobles and merchants, large silver gros tournois or groats or
guldiner or taler for rents and major purchases, smaller silver deniers or copper pennies,
or coins made of a mixture of metals (called billon) for everyday purchases. Mints
that made coins were monitored and taxed by government authorities, but generally
operated privately. When governments needed money, they ordered mints to make
smaller coins or use less precious metal, thus increasing the amount of taxes fl owing
to the government for the same amount of metal. Debased gold coins grew smaller
and their purity declined from 24 carats to 18 or even less, while “silver” coins turned
black because of their high copper content, or grew so thin that they crumbled and
bent. Merchants thus often weighed coins rather than counting them, and relied on
networks of information about which coins were to be particularly avoided, though
debasement still led to infl ation.
Certain coins, especially Venetian gold ducats and gold fl orins minted fi rst in Florence
and then elsewhere, were widely recognized and became a standard in international
exchange in the fi fteenth century. In the sixteenth century, these were joined by
the larger Spanish doubloon and the English sovereign, both made from New World
gold. New sources of silver in central Europe and the New World also allowed for larger
silver coins, such as the English crown, the French franc, and the Spanish piece of eight,
so called because it was worth eight of the older Spanish silver coins. Thus when pirate
rhymes talk of “gold doubloons and pieces of eight,” they are referring to large Spanish
gold and silver coins made from New World metal.
Most people – and no doubt many would-be pirates – never saw large gold or silver
coins. They paid their taxes and rent and bought food and clothing with small silver
or copper or mixed-metal coins. If they needed cash quickly, they went to a local
money- lender, who often took an item of clothing or household goods as security on
the loan, so acting as a pawnbroker as well. Stands with men and women selling used
merchandise of all types, along with other small items not regulated by guilds such as
soap or wooden dishes, fi lled the market place of any early modern city. They received
their goods from people who needed money, or from the households of people who
had died. Many cities required such individuals to register, pay a fee, and swear an
oath not to take in stolen merchandise, not to make agreements with each other to
fi x prices, and not to take more than a certain rate of commission. During outbreaks
of the plague, they were forbidden to sell clothing or bed linen from sick people, and
during times of war, they were specifi cally prohibited from selling soldiers’ booty. Such
regulations were diffi cult to enforce. “Thieves’ markets” sprang up from time to time,
were closed down, opened in another place in town, and were closed down again. Sellers
hid things when market offi cials were nearby, leading a frustrated city council in
Nuremberg at one point to prohibit female pawnbrokers from sitting while selling,
as they suspected the women were hiding illegal merchandise under their long skirts.
The market for used merchandise was simply too good and the need for ready cash
too great; even smaller towns and villages had a pawnbroker/money-lender or two
who facilitated the movement of capital at the lowest level and sold small items. Men
and women also loaned their neighbors and family members money through informal
agreements, which allowed them to buy food or tools, or perhaps pay back gambling
debts. This culture of credit extended up the social hierarchy to the very top, as people
relied on their friends and associates to loan them money, often with no more than
their personal or household reputation as the guarantee for the loan.
The activities of village pawnbrokers differed in scale, but little in kind from those
of Europe’s wealthiest merchant-entrepreneurs. Of these, Jacob Fugger ( 1459–1525) of
Augsburg in southern Germany was perhaps the most successful in the sixteenth century.
His grandfather had been a prosperous weaver and cloth dealer, and Jacob continued
to sell cloth, both traditional heavy woolen cloth and newer, lighter varieties,
including cotton and fustian, a blend of cotton and linen. He used business techniques
that had fi rst been developed in the cities of northern Italy, developing a network
of branch offi ces in many parts of Europe and eventually overseas. His agents kept
detailed fi nancial records, using account books, ledgers, registers, and double-entry
bookkeeping; they also spied on competitors, sending regular reports back to the central
offi ce in Augsburg.
Fugger loaned money to nobles, church leaders, and rulers, accepting control of
mining properties as security on the loans. He gradually established a monopoly of
silver and copper mining in Tyrol, Hungary, and Slovakia, which provided him with
1.5 million fl orins profi t. That profi t was recirculated into further loans, and Fugger
made an enormous fortune; his contemporaries called him “Jacob the Rich.” He
fi nanced the imperial election of Charles V – a Habsburg – in 1519, for which he was
given control of mercury and silver mines in Spain; one of these, the Almadén mercury
mine, employed more than a thousand people by 1600. Fugger was a fi rm opponent of
the Protestant Reformation, and even more opposed to peasant demands for change.
He made sure that plenty of copper for casting cannons was delivered from his eastern
European mines during the German Peasants’ War. That copper was also put to the
same use closer to its origin, when a miners’ revolt broke out in mines run by a Fugger
subsidiary in Slovakia in 1525. Miners discontented with their shrinking wages in an
era of rising prices attacked company offi cials, and, like the peasants, mixed in some
Lutheran ideas; they were defeated, and their leaders arrested and executed.
Though the Fuggers had plenty of metal because of their control of mining operations,
they also used various types of non-metallic money: paper bills of exchange, bank
notes, and personal promissory notes. The Fuggers were patrons of the arts, commissioning
paintings, buying books, collecting ancient sculpture and coins, and supporting
musicians and composers. Jacob also had philanthropic concerns, building a housing
development called the Fuggerei for poor families in Augsburg, many of them less successful
weavers. The Fuggerei charged very low rents, but required tenants to be Catholic
and pray for Jacob’s soul; the housing development continues in operation today, still
charging only a token rent.
Jacob Fugger and his descendants became fabulously wealthy by loaning money
to rulers and church offi cials, especially the Habsburg family, but this was also their
downfall. Spain declared bankruptcy in 1557, 1575, and 1607, which meant that the Fuggers
could not claim repayment on their loans. Loans to Spain and the Spanish-ruled
Netherlands represented more than half the Fuggers’ assets, and by the middle of the
seventeenth century it was clear these would never be repaid; the company was dissolved
in 1650.
Other merchant families made fortunes nearly equal to that of the Fuggers. The
Mendes family of Portugal (later known as the Nasi family), who had been forcibly
converted from Judaism, fl ed to the Netherlands, and established large-scale banking
operations in Antwerp. Gracia Nasi (1510–68), the widow of the fi rm’s founder, ran the
family business from Antwerp, Venice, Ferrara, and eventually Constantinople, making
an alliance with Süleyman the Magnifi cent for trading and fi nancial privileges. She
reconverted to Judaism, and established an “underground railroad” to get Jews out of
Portugal and Spain, convincing Süleyman to grant her a long-term lease on property in
Greece where these refugees could resettle. Like Jacob Fugger, Gracia Nasi patronized
learning and the arts, especially the publication of Hebrew books, and a number of
Jewish scholarly works from the sixteenth century were dedicated to her. Her nephew
Joseph Nasi (1524–79) became a close adviser to Sultan Selim II ( ruled 1566–74), and the
governor of several territories. His power declined when the Turks reestablished their
commercial ties with France, however, and his hopes for a commercial empire centered
in Constantinople ended when the Turkish fl eet was defeated at Lepanto in 1571.
In the fi rst half of the sixteenth century, Antwerp was the largest center of fi nancial
activities in Europe and one of the world’s richest cities. Shortly after Portuguese voyages
to the East Indies began bringing in signifi cant amounts of spices, Portugal made
Antwerp the main outlet for spices in Europe, and the Habsburg emperors favored the
city’s bankers and merchants. The English Merchant Adventurers, a confederation of
independent merchants, mostly from London, that controlled the export of English
cloth, established their continental base in Antwerp. The fi rst stock exchange or Bourse
was set up there in 1460, and in 1531 this moved into an elaborate new building, the fi rst
building in the world designed to be a stock and trade exchange. Sir Thomas Gresham
(1519–79), an English merchant and royal offi cial in Antwerp, admired this building
so much that he persuaded Queen Elizabeth to build an exchange patterned after it in
London; this Royal Exchange was built in 1566–7, and became the center of London’s
commercial and banking activities.
The most profi table business arena was loaning money to governments, for which
interest rates could be extremely high, but this was also very risky. Along with the Fuggers,
other banking houses in Genoa, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London made huge
loans to governments, which could not keep up with their fi nancial needs in an era of
infl ation and frequent warfare, despite charging higher and higher taxes. Some of these
were repaid and some were not, for there was no way that a private bank could collect
when a government declared bankruptcy.
Antwerp reached the height of its prosperity about 1560, just before the revolt of
the Netherlands. In 1576, Spanish troops housed in the city, who had received no pay
because of the bankruptcy of the Spanish crown, mutinied; they seized everything of
value, burned many buildings, raped women, and slaughtered about six or seven thousand
city residents. This “Spanish fury” was followed by another round of destruction,
the “French fury” in 1583 when the duke of Anjou, the brother of the French king, attempted
to take Antwerp from the Spanish. This was unsuccessful, but Dutch troops
later blocked Antwerp’s access to the sea, limiting its role in international trade. With
this, Amsterdam became Europe’s most important fi nancial and commercial center,
aided in its rise by the immigration of Protestant and Jewish merchants and artisans
from all over Europe, including Antwerp.
World History
