| As a result of the convergence of merchants trading in spices from Asia, English cloths, and metals from central and eastern Europe, Antwerp was well on the way to becoming the premier market in Europe by the sixteenth century. As a result, the city was home to large numbers of foreign merchants with the Germans forming the largest group. The great overseas trading networks of the early modern period, however, had much less an impact on Europe's economy than was once thought. The more mundane intracontinental trade which, in the case of Antwerp, was dominated by Germans still fueled the European economy. German merchants were vital to the distribution of goods to the European in interior.;This dissertation reconstructs the types of business relationships, and their changes over time, among German merchants, between German merchants the local merchant community, and also between German merchants and the various foreign merchants in Antwerp. The techniques and business practices the German merchants, as well as the flow of their goods, and their participation in financial transactions are key components of this study. The extent to which German merchants were assimilated into Antwerp's society, and the social and cultural activities of their community in Antwerp is also examined.;The significance of this research is threefold. First, the examination of the volume and value of overland trade presented in this study suggests overland trade was of prime importance in the sixteenth-century economy. Second, historians have tended to think about the Antwerp economy as being based primarily on the transshipment of goods produced elsewhere. The data indicate that the products of the southern Netherlands were, indeed, being shipped to Germany in much greater numbers then was previously suspected, and that this trade was being conducted by many small scale merchants not by the few great merchant firms of the period. Finally, because the German merchant community in Antwerp enjoyed none of the privileges that other merchant communities were commonly accorded by trading towns during this period, this study sheds new light on our understanding of the organization of foreign merchants communities in general. |
