Monetary Contraction and Mercantile Credit in Later Medieval England

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3321983
AutoresPamela Nightingale (Science Oxford, autor correspondente)
Ano1990
Volume43
Fascículo4
Páginas560-575
Data de publicação1990-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Economic History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-0289.1990.tb00545.x
OpenAlexW2087358149
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas28
Referências citadas9

m he part played by credit in the English medieval economy was established 1 long ago by Postan in two articles, which not only studied its legal forms but showed that credit could finance up to 75 per cent or more of a merchant's transactions.2 The subject therefore forms an important part of the debate about the effects of monetary contraction on the medieval economy and its relation to the depression of the fifteenth century.3 Since Postan first dismissed the possible monetary causes of this depression as of little consequence compared with the fall in the population,4 Day, and most recently Spufford, have shown the extent and seriousness of the monetary decline which first became apparent in England from the I370s onwards and developed into a major crisis in northern Europe in the first and fifth decades of the fifteenth century.5 However, Hatcher has argued in opposition to the monetarists that the effects of monetary contraction may have been offset by the use of credit, and that there is no evidence in the fifteenth century that money was in such short supply that merchants were reduced to barter.6 Bolton has also written that 'credit freed trade from the limitations of the money supply'. The chief evidence used to support this view is that, despite a drop of about two-thirds in the output of the English mints between I370 and I400, the English cloth industry expanded its exports from about 2,000 cloths a year in the early I350S to over 40,000 between I390 and I395.8 Industrial and commercial growth on this scale implies a considerable investment by weavers in looms and raw materials, as well as the employment of much mercantile capital. It is therefore important to establish how far this was provided by an extension of credit, and whether or not credit expansion proved able to compensate for a shortage of money, or whether, as monetary historians assert, credit was tied to and limited by the money supply.9

Ancient history · Barter · Contraction (grammar) · Economics · Fifteenth · Financial system · Linguistics · Market economy · Monetarism · Monetary economics · Monetary policy · Political science · Seriousness · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Medieval Architecture and Archaeology · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy