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1 results

  • 3 - Merchants, markets and towns

  • from PART I - GENERAL THEMES
  • Edited by Timothy Reuter, University of Southampton
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    13 March 2000, pp 64-94

  • Summary

    The beginnings of the European town in the form known to us from the late Middle Ages lie in the tenth century. The trading of Islamic merchants was shaped by a detailed legislative framework based on writing. In the regions outside the old Roman Empire incorporated into the Frankish empire during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, people find very varying beginnings for quasi-urban settlements and for mercantile centres. Markets for wholesale and long-distance trade, merchants' inns, and also markets for the agrarian produce of the hinterland lay on the periphery. In the transalpine regions of the former Frankish empire, in what were becoming France and Ottonian Germany, the development of towns took a quite different path. Although the development of towns and markets in France, Lotharingia and Germany was strongly influenced by regional political forces, the Ottonian rulers played a decisive part.