Editing Merchant (section)

===Merchants in the medieval period===
[[File:Caravane Marco Polo.jpg|thumb|left|[[Marco Polo]] was among the earliest European merchants to travel to the Orient, helping to open it up to trade in the 13th century]]

Medieval England and Europe witnessed a rapid expansion in trade and the rise of a wealthy and powerful merchant class. Blintiff has investigated the early medieval networks of market towns and suggests that by the 12th century there was an upsurge in the number of market towns and the emergence of merchant circuits as traders bulked up surpluses from smaller regional, different day markets and resold them at the larger centralised market towns. Peddlers or itinerant merchants filled any gaps in the distribution system.<ref>Bintliff, J., "Going to Market in Antiquity", In ''Stuttgarter Kolloquium zur Historischen Geographie des Altertums'', Eckart Olshausen and Holger Sonnabend (eds), Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 2002, p. 224</ref> From the 11th century, the [[Crusades]] helped to open up new trade routes in the Near East, while the adventurer and merchant, [[Marco Polo]] stimulated interest in the far East in the 13th century. Medieval merchants began to trade in exotic goods imported from distant shores including spices, wine, food, furs, fine cloth (notably silk), glass, jewellery and many other [[luxury goods]]. Market towns began to spread across the landscape during the medieval period.{{Cn|date=August 2021}}

Merchant [[guild]]s began to form during the medieval period. A fraternity formed by the merchants of Tiel in Gelderland (in present-day Netherlands) in 1020 is believed to be the first example of a merchant guild. The term, ''guild'' was first used for ''gilda mercatoria'' and referred to body of merchants operating out of St. Omer, France in the 11th century. Similarly, London's ''[[Hanseatic League|Hanse]]'' was formed in the 12th century.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-06-13 |title=Merchant guild {{!}} Medieval, Craftsmen, Guilds {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/merchant-guild |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref> These guilds controlled the way that trade was to be conducted and codified rules governing the conditions of trade. Rules established by merchant guilds were often incorporated into the charters granted to [[market town]]s. In the early 12th century, a confederation of merchant guilds, formed out the German cities of Lübeck and Hamburg, known as "The [[Hanseatic League]]" came to dominate trade around the [[Baltic Sea]]. By the 13th and 14th centuries, merchant guilds had sufficient resources to have erected [[guildhall|guild halls]] in many major market towns.<ref>Epstein, S.A, ''Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe,'' University of North Carolina Press, 1991, pp 50–100</ref>

[[File:Adriaen van der Kabel 1682 Mediterraneon port with Turkish merchants.jpg|thumb|Mediterranean port with Turkish merchants by [[Adriaen van der Kabel]], 1682]]
 
During the thirteenth century, European businesses became more permanent and were able to maintain sedentary merchants and a system of agents. Merchants specialised in financing, organisation and transport while agents were domiciled overseas and acted on behalf of a principal. These arrangements first appeared on the route from Italy to the Levant, but by the end of the thirteenth century merchant colonies could be found from Paris, London, Bruges, Seville, Barcelona and Montpellier. Over time these partnerships became more commonplace and led to the development of large trading companies. These developments also triggered innovations such as double-entry book-keeping, commercial accountancy, international banking including access to lines of credit, marine insurance and commercial courier services. These developments are sometimes known as the ''commercial revolution.''<ref>Casson, M. and Lee, J., "The Origin and Development of Markets: A Business History Perspective," ''Business History Review,'' Vol 85, Spring, 2011, doi:10.1017/S0007680511000018, pp 22–26</ref>

Luca Clerici has made a detailed study of Vicenza's food market during the sixteenth century. He found that there were many different types of merchants operating out of the markets. For example, in the dairy trade, cheese and butter was sold by the members of two craft guilds (i.e., cheesemongers who were shopkeepers) and that of the so-called ‘resellers’ (hucksters selling a wide range of foodstuffs), and by other sellers who were not enrolled in any guild.  Cheesemongers’ shops were situated at the town hall and were very lucrative. Resellers and direct sellers increased the number of sellers, thus increasing competition, to the benefit of consumers. Direct sellers, who brought produce from the surrounding countryside, sold their wares through the central market place and priced their goods at considerably lower rates than cheesemongers.<ref>Clerici, L., "Le prix du bien commun. Taxation des prix et approvisionnement urbain (Vicence, XVIe-XVIIe siècle)" [The price of the common good. Official prices and urban provisioning in sixteenth and seventeenth century Vicenza] in I prezzi delle cose nell’età preindustriale /''The Prices of Things in Pre-Industrial Times,'' [forthcoming], Firenze University Press, 2017.</ref>
[[File:A merchant making up the account.jpg|thumbnail|left|''A merchant making up the account'' by [[Hokusai|Katsushika Hokusai]].]]
From 1300 through to the 1800s a large number of European chartered and merchant companies were established to exploit international trading opportunities. The [[Company of Merchant Adventurers of London]], chartered in 1407, controlled most of the fine cloth imports<ref>[http://library.eb.co.uk/eb/article-9052088 "Merchant Adventurers"] in [[Encyclopædia Britannica]], Online Library Edition, 2013. Retrieved 22 July 2013.</ref> while the [[Hanseatic League]] controlled most of the trade in the Baltic Sea. A detailed study of European trade between the thirteenth and fifteenth century demonstrates that the European age of discovery acted as a major driver of change. In 1600, goods travelled relatively short distances: grain 5–10 miles; cattle 40–70 miles; wool and wollen cloth 20–40 miles. However, in the years following the opening up of Asia and the discovery of the New World, goods were imported from very long distances: calico cloth from India, porcelain, silk and tea from China, spices from India and South-East Asia and tobacco, sugar, rum and coffee from the New World.<ref>Braudel, F. and Reynold, S., ''The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th to 18th Century'', Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1992</ref>

In Mesoamerica, a tiered system of traders developed independently. The local markets, where people purchased their daily needs were known as ''[[tianguis]]'' while ''[[pochteca]]'' referred to long-distance, professional merchants traders who obtained rare goods and luxury items desired by the nobility. This trading system supported various levels of pochteca – from very high status merchants through to minor traders who acted as a type of peddler to fill in gaps in the distribution system.<ref>Salomón, F., "Pochteca and mindalá: a comparison of long-distance traders in Ecuador and Mesoamerica," ''Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society, '' Vol. 1–2, 1978, pp 231–246</ref> The Spanish conquerors commented on the impressive nature of the local and regional markets in the 15th century. The [[Mexica]] ([[Aztec]]) market of [[Tlatelolco (altepetl)|Tlatelolco]] was the largest in all the Americas and said to be superior to those in Europe.<ref>{{cite book|editor=Rebecca M. Seaman|title=Conflict in the Early Americas: An Encyclopedia of the Spanish Empire's Aztec, Incan and Mayan Conquests|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IXKjAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA375|page=375|isbn=9781598847772|date=27 August 2013|publisher=Abc-Clio }}</ref>

In much of Renaissance Europe and even after, merchant trade remained seen as a lowly profession and it was often subject to legal discrimination or restrictions, although in a few areas its status began to improve.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Querciolo Mazzonis |title=Spirituality, Gender, and the Self in Renaissance Italy: Angela Merici and the Company of St. Ursula (1474–1540) |date=2007 |publisher=CUA Press |isbn=978-0813214900 |page=79}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=Margaret L.|last1= King |author1-link=Margaret L. King|title=A Short History of the Renaissance in Europe |date=2016 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1487593087 |page=332}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dion C. Smythe |title=Strangers to Themselves: The Byzantine Outsider: Papers from the Thirty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, March 1998 |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1351897808 |pages=129–130}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Jeannie Labno |title=Commemorating the Polish Renaissance Child: Funeral Monuments and their European Context |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317163954 |chapter=3}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=R. S. Alexander |title=Europe's Uncertain Path 1814-1914: State Formation and Civil Society |date=2012 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1405100526 |page=82}}</ref>