Truls Ljungström’s Reviews > The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750 > Status Update

Taverniers beskrivning av köpmannaklassen i inden

By 1589, some inhabitants of Vitre, thrown out of their homes by the Huguenots, went to settle in Spain, with which they had long business relations. In the instructions to Sieur de Sancerre, who was going to Spain as the ambassador of France in 1598, Henri IV referred to the "communities of Seville and Saint-Lucca." He also mentioned three merchants from Bayonne, / , who had been established in France.

A historian's assertion that the Venetian merchants did not need guilds "because they all lived in one guild" is certainly an exaggeration, but it reveals one important truth about the Venetian economy. From the beginning Venetian merchants were essentially agents - "brokers" according to MacKenney - engaged in furnishing commercial services. The nature of goods hardly mattered to them.

What strikes him in the case of Venice is the absence of a merchant guild. The arti were simply artisans & did not play any role in overseas commerce. But the economic life of the city revolved around what merchant guilds elsewhere attempted 2 promote and protect: the staple. From the fifteenth century the Rialto received goods coming from both the east & the west and exchanged them; this was the role of merchants.

At the outset of merchant activities, merchants in towns formed a sworn association, or 1 or more guilds, in the same way as artisans or specialists of all kinds. They had nothing in common with a pret ala grosse, a union of at least 2 partners, or a commenda, ancestor of the modern limited partnership company, or even a company of equal partners gathered 4 either a specific trade operation or a series of operations.