Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T17:57:59.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Origin and Development of Markets: A Business History Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2011

Mark Casson  and
John S. Lee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The origins of the market are obscure, but substantial documentary evidence survives from the eleventh century onward, when chartered markets and new towns were established across Western Europe. The expansion of the market system is important for business history because it created new opportunities for business growth. There has been no systematic literature review on market evolution since Henri Pirenne and Raymond de Roover, and this article attempts to fill the gap. It shows that successful markets were regulated–often by civic authorities–to maintain a reputation for reasonable prices and quality control. Markets were located at both transport hubs and centers of consumption, even when the latter were quite remote. However, as transport and communication costs declined, shakeouts occurred and only the larger markets survived.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 9 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, Glasgow edition (Oxford, 1976), 34.Google Scholar

2 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).Google Scholar

3 McCraw, Thomas K., Regulation in Perspective: Historical Essays (Cambridge, Mass., 1982)Google Scholar; Vietor, Richard H. K., Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On parallel and complementary approaches to financial markets, see Cassis, Youssef, Capitals of Capital (Cambridge, U.K., 2010)Google Scholar, and Michie, Ranald, The Global Securities Market: A History (Oxford, 2010).Google Scholar

4 Hurst, James Willard, Law and Markets in United States History (Madison, Wisc., 1982).Google Scholar

5 Pirenne, Henri, Medieval Cities, trans. Halsey, F. D. (Princeton, N.J., 1925)Google Scholar; de Roover, Raymond, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963).Google Scholar

6 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

7 Schumpeter, Joseph A., Theory of Economic Development, ed. Opie, Redvers (Cambridge, Mass., 1934).Google Scholar

8 Britnell, Richard H., “The Proliferation of Markets in England, 1200–1349,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 34 (1981): 209–21Google Scholar; Samantha Letters, with Fernandes, Mario, Keene, Derek, and Myhill, Olwen, Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516 (Kew, Surrey, 2003)Google Scholar, available online at the Centre for Metropolitan History Web site: www.history.ac.uk/cmh/gaz/gazweb2.html, accessed 5 Dec. 2010; Dijkman, Jessica, “Medieval Market Institutions: The Organisation of Commodity Markets in Holland, c.1200– c.1450,” PhD diss., University of Utrecht, 2010, 295–314.Google Scholar

9 O'Flanagan, Patrick, “Markets and Fairs in Ireland, 1600–1800: Index of Economic Development and Regional Growth,” Journal of Historical Geography 11, no. 4 (1985): 366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Bailey, Mark, “Trade and Towns in Medieval England: New Insights from Familiar Sources,” The Local Historian 29 (1999): 194–211.Google Scholar

11 Blondé, Bruno, Stabel, Peter, Stobart, Jon, and Damme, Ilja Van, “Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: An Introduction,” in Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Blondé, Bruno et al. (Turnhout, Belgium, 2006), 7–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thwaites, Wendy, “Farmers, Markets and Trade in England, 1200–1900,” The Local Historian 37 (2007): 76–98.Google Scholar

12 Britnell, Richard H., “Local Trade, Remote Trade: Institutions, Information, and Market Integration, 1050–1330,” in Fiere e mercati nella integrazione delle economie europee, secc. XIII–XVIII, ed. Cavaciocchi, Simonetta (Florence, 2001), 185–89Google Scholar; Hoyle, R. W., “New Markets and Fairs in the Yorkshire Dales, 1550–1750,” in Post-medieval Landscapes, ed. Barnwell, P. S. and Palmer, Marilyn (Macclesfield, 2007), 94.Google Scholar

13 Epstein, Steven A., An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000–1500 (Cambridge, U.K., 2009), 81–83Google Scholar; Moore, Ellen, The Fairs of Medieval England: An Introductory Study (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar; van Bavel, B. J. P., Manors and Markets: Economy and Society in the Low Countries, 500–1600 (Oxford, 2010), 221–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Jeffreys, James B., Retail Trading in Britain, 1850–1950 (Cambridge, U.K., 1954).Google Scholar

15 Smith, Colin, “The Wholesale and Retail Markets of London, 1660–1840,” Economic History Review 55 (2002): 35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Keene, Derek, “Sites of Desire: Shops, Selds and Wardrobes in London and Other English Cities, 1100–1550,” in Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Blondé, Bruno et al. (Turnhout, Belgium, 2006), 125–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Fowler, Christina, “Changes in Provincial Retail Practice during the Eighteenth Century, with Particular Reference to Central–Southern England,” Business History 40 (1998): 37–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Peter, European Cities and Towns, 400–2000 (Oxford, 2009), 151–52.Google Scholar

18 Bellingham, Roger A., “Retailing at Selby in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 74 (2002): 227, 231.Google Scholar

19 Mui, Hoh-Cheung and Mui, Lorna H., Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-century England (London, 1989), 216–19.Google Scholar

20 Alan Everitt, “The Marketing of Agricultural Produce, 1500–1640,” and Chartres, John, “The Marketing of Agricultural Produce, 1640–1750,” in Chartres, John, ed., Chapters from the Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4: Agricultural Markets and Trade, 1500–1750 (Cambridge, U.K., 1990), 16–29, 160–71; Hoyle, “New Markets and Fairs”; O'Flanagan, “Markets and Fairs,” 364–78.Google Scholar

21 Smith, “The Wholesale and Retail Markets of London.”

22 Clark, European Cities, 266–67; Miller, Michael B., The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 (London, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Walsh, Claire, “The Newness of the Department Store: A View from the Eighteenth Century,” in Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850–1939, ed. Crossick, Geoffrey and Jaumain, Serge (Aldershot, 1999), 46–71.Google Scholar

24 Barger, Harold, Distribution's Place in the American Economy since 1869 (Princeton, 1955), 69–71.Google Scholar

25 Stobart, Jon, “Clothes, Cabinets, and Carriages: Second-hand Dealing in Eighteenth Century England,” in Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Blondé, Bruno et al. (Turnhout, Belgium, 2006), 225–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woodward, Donald, “‘Swords into Ploughshares’: Recycling in Pre-Industrial England,” Economic History Review 38 (1985): 178–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lemire, Beverly, “Consumerism in Preindustrial and Early Industrial England: The Trade in Secondhand Clothes,” Journal of British Studies 27 (1988): 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambert, Miles, “‘Cast-off Wearing Apparell’: The Consumption and Distribution of Second-hand Clothing in Northern England during the Long Eighteenth Century,” Textile History 35 (2004): 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Davis, James, “Marketing Second-hand Goods in Late Medieval England,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 2 (2010): 270–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 North, Douglass C., Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge, U.K., 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Stabel, Peter, “Markets and Retail,” in Fiere e mercati nella integrazione delle economie europee, secc. XIII–XVIII, ed. Cavaciocchi, Simonetta (Florence, 2001), 803–9.Google Scholar

29 Britnell, “Local Trade, Remote Trade,” 194; Britnell, Richard H., The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000–1500, 2nd ed. (Manchester, 1996), 90–97Google Scholar; Kowaleski, Maryanne, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge, U.K., 1995), 180–92Google Scholar; Davis, James, “Baking for the Common Good: A Reassessment of the Assize of Bread in Medieval England,” Economic History Review 57 (2004): 465–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Casson, Catherine, “A Comparative Study of Prosecutions for Forgery in Trade and Manufacturing in Six English Towns, 1250 to 1400,” unpublished PhD diss., University of York, 2010.Google Scholar

30 Stabel, “Markets and Retail,” 800, 816; Masschaele, James, “The Public Space of the Marketplace in Medieval England,” Speculum 77 (2002): 383–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Lee, John S., “Grain Shortages in Late Medieval Towns,” in Markets and Entrepreneurs in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Richard Britnell, ed. Dodds, Ben (Woodbridge, 2011)Google Scholar; Outhwaite, R. B., Dearth, Public Policy, and Social Disturbance in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Davis, James, Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, c.1200–c.1500 (Cambridge, U.K., forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Thompson, E. P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (1971): 76–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Mackenney, Richard, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c.1250–c.1650 (Totowa, N.J., 1987)Google Scholar; Epstein, S. R., “Craft Guilds in the Pre-modern Economy: A Discussion,” Economic History Review 61 (2008): 155–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Spufford, Peter, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London, 2002), 16–59.Google Scholar

36 Postan, M. M., “Credit in Medieval Trade,” in Medieval Trade and Finance, ed. Postan, M. M. (Cambridge, U.K., 1973), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Clark, Elaine, “Debt Litigation in a Late Medieval English Village,” in Pathways to Medieval Peasants, ed. Raftis, J. A. (Toronto, 1981), 247–79Google Scholar; Briggs, Chris, Credit and Village Society in Fourteenth-Century England (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (London, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fontaine, Laurence, “Antonio and Shylock: Credit and Trust in France, c.1680–c.1780,” Economic History Review 54 (2001): 39–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Epstein, S. R., Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300–1750 (London, 2000); Epstein, “Regional Fairs,” 472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Dodgshon, Robert A., “The Changing Evaluation of Space, 1500–1914,” in An Historical Geography of England and Wales, ed. Dodgshon, Robert A. and Butlin, R. A., 2nd ed. (London, 1990), 261–63.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 264–65.

41 North, Douglass C., “Markets and Other Allocative Systems in History: The Challenge of Karl Polanyi,” Journal of European Economic History 6 (1977): 703–16Google Scholar; Dodgshon, , “Changing Evaluation of Space,” 260, 264–68.Google Scholar

42 John, Richard R., Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Cambridge, Mass., 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Leech, William, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York, 1993), 351.Google Scholar

44 Britnell, Commercialisation, 21–23; Palliser, David, ed., Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 1: 600–1540 (Cambridge, U.K., 2000), 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Astill, Grenville, “Medieval Towns and Urbanization,” in Reflections: Fifty Years of Medieval Archaeology, 1957–2007, ed. Gilchrist, Roberta and Reynolds, Andrew (Leeds, 2009), 260.Google Scholar

45 Palliser, Cambridge Urban History, 264; Victoria County History: Oxfordshire, vol. 12 (London, 1990), 326, 360, 369.Google Scholar

46 Spufford, Power and Profit, 60–139; Harvey, Barbara, “The Aristocratic Consumer in England in the Long Thirteenth Century,” in Thirteenth-Century England, vol. 6: Proceedings of the Durham Conference, ed. Prestwich, Michael, Britnell, Richard, and Frame, Robin (Woodbridge, 1997), 17–37.Google Scholar

47 Campbell, Bruce M. S. and Overton, Mark, “A New Perspective of Medieval and Early Modern Agriculture: Six Centuries of Norfolk Farming, c.1250–c.1850,” Past and Present 141 (1993): 99–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grantham, George, “Agricultural Supply during the Industrial Revolution: French Evidence and European Implications,” Journal of Economic History 49 (1989): 43–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Fisher, F. Jack, “The Development of London as a Centre of Conspicuous Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” and “London as an ‘Engine of Economic Growth,’ ” in London and the English Economy, 1500–1700, ed. Corfield, Penelope J. and Harte, Negley B. (London, 1990), 105–18, 185–98Google Scholar; Wrigley, Edward Anthony, “A Simple Model of London's Importance in Changing English Society and Economy, 1650–1750,” in Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology, ed. Abrams, Philip and Wrigley, Edward Anthony (Cambridge, U.K., 1978)Google Scholar; Campbell, Bruce M. S. et al. , A Medieval Capital and its Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and Distribution in the London Region, c.1300 (London, 1993).Google Scholar

49 Abulafi, David, “Southern Italy and the Florentine Economy, 1265–1370,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 33 (1981): 377–88Google Scholar; Britnell, Richard H., “Markets and Incentives: Common Themes and Regional Variations,” in Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death, ed. Dodds, Ben and Britnell, Richard H. (Hatfield, 2008), 10.Google Scholar

50 Britnell, “Local Trade, Remote Trade,” 202; Galloway, James A., “One Economy or Many? Markets, Regions and the Impact of London, c. 1300–1600,” in, Trade, Urban Hinterlands, and Market Integration, c.1300–1600, ed. Galloway, James A. (London, 2000), 23–42Google Scholar; Hybel, Nils, “The Grain Trade in Northern Europe before 1350,” Economic History Review 55 (2002): 219–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Gibson, Alex J. S. and Smout, T. Christopher, “Regional Prices and Market Regions: The Evolution of the Early Modern Scottish Grain Market,” Economic History Review 48 (1995): 258–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 McKendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth-century England (London, 1982).Google Scholar

53 De Vries, Jan, “The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 54 (1994): 249–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Gregory and Van Der Werf, Ysbrand, “Work in Progress? The Industrious Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 58 (1998): 830–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Weatherill, Lorna, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (London, 1988)Google Scholar; Dyer, Christopher, An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005), 126–57Google Scholar; Kowaleski, Maryanne, “A Consumer Economy,” in A Social History of England, 1200–1500, ed. Horrox, Rosemary and Ormrod, Mark (Oxford, 2004), 238–59.Google Scholar

55 Dyer, Christopher, “The Consumer and the Market in the Later Middle Ages,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 42 (1989): 305–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Threlfall-Holmes, Miranda, Monks and Markets: Durham Cathedral Priory, 1460–1520 (Oxford, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Keene, Derek, “Medieval London and Its Region,” London Journal 14 (1989): 106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Wrigley, “A Simple Model of London's Importance,” 233.

58 Maitland, Frederick W., Township and Borough (Cambridge, U.K., 1898): 40Google Scholar; Lee, John S., Cambridge and Its Economic Region, 1450–1560 (Hatfield, 2005), 87, 117.Google Scholar

59 Britnell, Richard H., Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, U.K., 1986), 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Lee, John S., “The Functions and Fortunes of English Small Towns at the Close of the Middle Ages: Evidence from John Leland's Itinerary,” Urban History 37 (2010): 24–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Dyer, Age of Transition, 143.

62 Britnell, Richard H., “Urban Demand in the English Economy, 1300–1600,” in Trade, Urban Hinterlands and Market Integration, c.1300–1600, ed. Galloway, James A. (London, 2000), 1–22Google Scholar; Masschaele, James, “The Multiplicity of Medieval Markets Reconsidered,” Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994): 255–71; Britnell, Commercialisation, 233–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 Epstein, S. R., “Regional Fairs, Institutional Innovation, and Economic Growth in Late Medieval Europe,” Economic History Review 47 (1994): 459–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, S. R., “Fairs, Towns and States in Renaissance Europe,” in Fiere e mercati nella integrazione delle economie europee, secc. XIII–XVIII, ed. Cavaciocchi, Simonetta (Florence, 2001), 71–90Google Scholar; Blanchard, Ian, “The Continental European Cattle Trades, 1400–1600,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 39 (1986): 427–60.Google Scholar

64 Lee, John S., “The Role of Fairs in Late Medieval England,” in Town and Countryside in the Age of the Black Death, ed. Rigby, S. H. and Bailey, Mark (Turnhout, Belgium, forthcoming).Google Scholar

65 Van Bavel, Manors and Markets, 221–22, 237–38.

66 Stobart, “Clothes, Cabinets, and Carriages”; Walton, John R., “The Rise of the Agricultural Auctioneer in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Journal of Historical Geography 10 (1984): 15–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Mitchell, Ian, “The Changing Role of Fairs in the Long Eighteenth Century: Evidence from the Midlands,” Economic History Review 60 (2007): 545–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 Britnell, Richard, “Markets, Shops, Inns, Taverns and Private Houses in Medieval English Trade,” in Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Blondé, Bruno et al. (Turnhout, Belgium, 2006), 109–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Walter, John, “The Social Economy of Dearth in Early Modern England,” in Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society, ed. Walter, John and Schofield, Roger (Cambridge, U.K., 1989), 100–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Lee, Cambridge and Its Economic Region, 94.

71 Dyer, Chris, “The Hidden Trade of the Middle Ages: Evidence from the West Midlands of England,” Journal of Historical Geography 18 (1992): 141–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bailey, Mark, “A Tale of Two Towns: Buntingford and Standon in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993): 358CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, Cambridge and Its Economic Region, 96–97.

72 Carlin, Martha, Medieval Southwark (London, 1996), 191–229.Google Scholar

73 Dijkman, Medieval Market Institutions, 84–121.

74 Britnell, “Markets and Incentives,” 9; Lee, Cambridge and Its Economic Region, 161; Everitt, Alan, “The English Urban Inn, 1560–1760,” in Perspectives in English Urban History, ed. Everitt, Alan (London, 1973), 91–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spufford, Power and Profit, 203–4; Deceulaer, Harold, “Dealing with Diversity: Pedlars in the Southern Netherlands in the Eighteenth Century,” in Buyers and Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Blondé, Bruno et al. (Turnhout, Belgium, 2006), 180.Google Scholar

75 Carlin, Martha, “Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in Medieval England,” in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, ed. Carlin, Martha (London, 1998).Google Scholar

76 Smith, “Markets of London.”

77 Fontaine, Laurence, History of Pedlars in Europe, trans. Whittaker, Vicki (Oxford, 1996), 8–10.Google Scholar

78 Tudor Economic Documents, 3 vols., ed. Tawney, R. H. and Power, Eileen (London, 1924), 3: 108–9.Google Scholar

79 Spufford, Margaret, The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and their Wares in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1984), 43, 78, 90–103.Google Scholar

80 Wordsworth, Dorothy, The Grasmere Journals, ed. Woof, Pamela (Oxford, 1991), 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81 Deceulaer, “Dealing with Diversity,” 176–77; Westerfield, Ray B., Middlemen in English Business, Particularly between 1660 and 1760 (New Haven, 1915), 313–14Google Scholar; Fontaine, Pedlars, 92–93. For comparison with the twentieth-century salesman, see Friedman, Walter, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Cambridge, Mass., 2004).Google Scholar

82 Benson, John and Ugolini, Laura, “Introduction: Historians and the Nation of Shopkeepers,” in A Nation of Shopkeepers: Five Centuries of British Retailing, ed. Benson, John and Ugolini, Laura (London, 2003), 11–12Google Scholar; Davis, James, “ ‘Men as March with Fote Packes’: Pedlars and Freedom of Mobility in Late-Medieval England,” in Freedom of Movement in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the Twentieth Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Horden, Peregrine (Donington, 2007), 137–56Google Scholar; Alexander, Nicholas and Akehurst, Gary, “Introduction: The Emergence of Modern Retailing,” Business History 40, no. 4 (1998): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83 Deceulaer, “Dealing with Diversity,” 187–89.

84 Bell, Adrian, Brooks, Chris, and Dryburgh, Paul R., The English Wool Market, c.1230–1327 (Cambridge, U.K., 2007), 41–48, 58–63Google Scholar; Britnell, Commercialisation, 98–101, 161–63; Lee, Cambridge and Its Economic Region, 152–59, 165; Lee, John S., “Feeding the Colleges: Cambridge's Food and Fuel Supplies, 1450–1560,” Economic History Review 56 (2003): 243–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar