Medieval merchant
Reborn as a merchant, you would gamble your fortune on every cart and ship – and spend your nights doing sums by candlelight.
Roads, rivers and fairs
Long-distance trade revived strongly in Europe from the 11th century. Goods moved by river barge, by sea and on slow carts along roads that were often little more than tracks. Great seasonal fairs, above all those of Champagne in the 12th and 13th centuries, drew merchants from Italy, Flanders and beyond to buy and sell cloth, wool, spices, furs, wine and metals.
In the north, merchant towns formed the Hanseatic League, which from the 13th to the 15th century dominated trade around the Baltic and North Sea. Gdańsk, Toruń, Elbląg and Kraków were members, shipping grain, timber, wax, furs and salt west and bringing back cloth, herring and wine.
Money without coins
Carrying chests of silver was dangerous, so Italian merchants developed tools that still underlie modern finance: bills of exchange, which let you pay in one city and collect in another, partnership contracts such as the commenda, marine insurance and double-entry bookkeeping. The letters and account books of Francesco Datini of Prato, who died in 1410, survive in their tens of thousands and show how obsessively merchants tracked prices and news.
Risks of the trade
Dangers were constant: shipwreck, pirates, bandits on the road, wars that closed routes, and tolls collected at every bridge, river crossing and city gate. Many towns also held staple rights, forcing passing merchants to unload and offer their goods for sale locally – Kraków and Wrocław both enjoyed such privileges.
Success could raise a merchant family into the urban elite, onto the city council and sometimes into the nobility. The Church was uneasy about profit and forbade usury, so wealthy merchants often eased their consciences by funding chapels, hospitals and altarpieces.
