In the age of Jan van Eyck (c. 1380-1440)
and Memling (1435- 94) it was
unquestionably one of the finest cities in the world and the most industrious. The
textile industry was not only well- established in Bruges, but had also spilled out into
the towns of Flanders, bringing prosperity to Ghent and Ypres - creating an
industrial region unparalleled anywhere else in Europe. And the commercial life of
Bruges culminated in the creation in 1309, alongside and above the fairs, of her
famous Bourse - soon to be the centre of a sophisticated money market.
Francesco Datini's correspondent wrote
from Bruges on 26 April 1399, 'A Genova
pare sia per durare larghezza di danari e per tanto non rimettete la nostri danari o
sarebbe a buon prezo piutosto a Vinegia o a Firenze o qui o a Parigi rimettete, o a
Monpolier bien se lla rimesse vi paresse miglore'. (`It appears that there is an
abundance of specie in Genoa; so do not send our money to Genoa, or only if you
can get a very good price for it; put it rather in Venice or Florence, or here in
Bruges or in Paris or Montpellier; or wherever seems best to you.')
Important though the position of Bruges
was it was not of greater international
importance than Venice. Most of the ships in the harbour 'belonged to foreign
owners', that 'her inhabitants played only a minor part in active commerce. They
were content to act as intermediaries for the merchants who flocked into the town
from every direction' - which is virtually an admission that the people of Bruges
were cast in a subordinate role and that the city's trade was, to use an eighteenth-
century expression, 'passive'.
It is hard to see how the Hanseatic merchants
could have been spared during the
great crisis of the Black Death which gripped the western world in the second half
of the fourteenth century. It is true that despite the drop in population, the West's
demand for Baltic products remained the same. The population of the Low
Countries was in any case little affected by the Black Death and the growth of the
navies of the West suggests that imports of wood had not fallen, indeed the
reverse. But the movement of prices in the West discriminated against the Hansa.
After 1370, cereal prices fell, and those
of furs dropped after 1440, while the price
of industrial products continued to rise. This scissors-movement operated against
the trade of Lubeck and other Baltic towns.
In an associated movement, the hinterland
of the Hansa now experienced a series
of crises which set prince and noble, peasant and town against one another. And
close on their heels followed the decline of the distant silver and gold mines of
Hungary and Bohemia.
Finally came the challenge from new or
revived territorial states: Denmark,
England, the Netherlands, now reorganized under the Valois of Burgundy, Poland
(which had triumphed in 1466 over the Teutonic Knights), Muscovy under Ivan the
Terrible who in 1476 had put an end to the independence of Novgorod.
Moreover the merchants of England, Holland
and Nuremberg were beginning to
penetrate the heartland of the Hansa itself. Certain cities defended themselves:
thus Lubeck got the better of the English in 1470-74; others preferred to come to
terms with the new arrivals.
The decline of the Hansa seems to
have followed from the meeting between their
somewhat under- developed economy and the already quite advanced economy of
the West. And in any case, on a continental scale, one would hardly place Lubeck
on the same level as Venice or Bruges. Between the bustling West and the rather
less bustling East, the Hanseatic societies clung to an elementary kind of
capitalism. Their economy hesitated between barter nd money; it made little call on
credit: silver coin was for a long time the only currency allowed. Such traditions
were signs of inferiority, even in the context of the capitalism of the time. The very
serious crisis of the late fourteenth century could not but damage economies with
still shaky foundations. Only the strongest were comparatively untouched.
