Consumption is now a critical issue in late medieval and early modern historical and cultural studies. While we know increasingly about regulatory systems, we know much less about the daily practice of buying and selling. This book brings together contributions from urban historians, social historians and art historians to explore the issues of exchange, shopping behavior, social interactions, gender and physical space. Contributions deal with Italy, the Low Countries and England. In the articles in this volume lines of continuity between the medieval and early modern period have been stressed. In addition, some critical questions have been raised. Were markets necessarily less modern compared to fixed shops? How did changing consumers and consumer patterns interact with the retailer? The essays published here also emphasize the need to study different commercial circuits in their context. These circuits often overlapped and could not artificially be isolated from one another.
Author(s): Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel, Jon Stobart, Ilja Van Damme (eds.)
Series: Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800), 9
Publisher: Brepols
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 352
City: Turnhout
1. Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel, Jon Stobart and Ilja Van Damme / Retail circuits and practices in medieval and early modern Europe: an introduction 7
2. Evelyn Welch / The fairs of early modern Italy 31
3. Donatella Calabi / Renewal of the shop system: Italy in the early modern period 51
4. Fabrizio Nevola / 'Più honorati et suntuosi ala Republica': botteghe and luxury retail along Siena’s Strada Romana 65
5. Peter Stabel / From the market to the shop. Retail and urban space in late medieval Bruges 79
6. Richard Britnel / Markets, shops, inns, taverns and private houses in medieval English trade 109
7. Derek Keene / Sites of desire: shops, selds and wardrobes in London and other English cities, 1100-1550 125
8. Vanessa Harding / Shops, markets and retailers in London’s Cheapside, c. 1500-1700 155
9. Harald Deceulaer / Dealing with diversity: pedlars in the Southern Netherlands in the eighteenth century 171
10. Ilja Van Damme / Changing consumer preferences and evolutions in retailing. Buying and selling consumer durables in Antwerp (c. 1648 - c. 1748) 199
11. Jon Stobart / Clothes, cabinets and carriages: second-hand dealing in eighteenth-century England 225
12. Beverly Lemire / Plebeian commercial circuits and everyday material exchange in England, c. 1600-1900 245
13. David Gentilcore / Martino Grimaldi and the merchant-charlatans of early modern Italy 267
14. James Shaw / Liquidation or certification? Small claims disputes and retail credit in seventeenth-century Venice 277
15. Laura Van Aert / Trade and gender emancipation: retailing women in sixteenth-century Antwerp 297
16. Erwin Steegen / Eighteenth-century Maastricht shopkeepers and their hinterland customers 315
17. Claire Walsh / The social relations of shopping in early-modern England 331
