A guild is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular territory. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradespeople belonging to a professional association. They sometimes depended on grants of letters patent from a monarch or other ruler to enforce the flow of trade to their self-employed members, and to retain ownership of tools and the supply of materials, but most were regulated by the local government. Guild members found guilty of cheating the public would be fined or banned from the guild. A lasting legacy of traditional guilds are the guildhalls constructed and used as guild meeting-places.
The Hanseatic League was a medieval commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe. Growing from a few North German towns in the late 12th century, the League expanded between the 13th and 15th centuries and ultimately encompassed nearly 200 settlements across seven modern-day countries, ranging from Estonia in the north and east, to the King's Lynn, England in the west, and Kraków, Poland, in the south.
A merchant is a person who trades in commodities produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Historically, a merchant is anyone who is involved in business or trade. Merchants have operated for as long as industry, commerce, and trade have existed. In 16th-century Europe, two different terms for merchants emerged: meerseniers referred to local traders and koopman referred to merchants who operated on a global stage, importing and exporting goods over vast distances and offering added-value services such as credit and finance.
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural towns with a hinterland of villages are still commonly called market towns, as sometimes reflected in their names.
Magdeburg rights were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish Law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within cities and villages granted by the local ruler. Named after the German city of Magdeburg, these town charters were perhaps the most important set of medieval laws in Central Europe. They became the basis for the German town laws developed during many centuries in the Holy Roman Empire. The Magdeburg rights were adopted and adapted by numerous monarchs, including the rulers of Bohemia, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania, a milestone in the urbanization of the region which prompted the development of thousands of villages and cities.
The Incoterms or International Commercial Terms are a series of pre-defined commercial terms published by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) relating to international commercial law. Incoterms define the responsibilities of exporters and importers in the arrangement of shipments and the transfer of liability involved at various stages of the transaction. They are widely used in international commercial transactions or procurement processes and their use is encouraged by trade councils, courts and international lawyers. A series of three-letter trade terms related to common contractual sales practices, the Incoterms rules are intended primarily to clearly communicate the tasks, costs, and risks associated with the global or international transportation and delivery of goods. Incoterms inform sales contracts defining respective obligations, costs, and risks involved in the delivery of goods from the seller to the buyer, but they do not themselves conclude a contract, determine the price payable, currency or credit terms, govern contract law or define where title to goods transfers.
A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodities, particularly cloth merchants. Historically, merchant banks' purpose was to facilitate and/or finance production and trade of commodities, hence the name "merchant". Few banks today restrict their activities to such a narrow scope.
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions.
Staple may refer to:
A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities, towns, or villages.
City rights are a feature of the medieval history of the Low Countries. A liege lord, usually a count, duke or similar member of the high nobility, granted to a town or village he owned certain town privileges that places without city rights did not have.
The Steelyard, from the Middle Low German Stâlhof, was the kontor of the Hanseatic League in London, and their main trading base in England, from the 13th and 16th centuries. The main goods that the League exported from London were wool and from the 14th century woollen cloths. An important import good was beeswax. The kontor tended to be dominated by Rhenish and Westphalian traders, especially from Cologne.
Merchant of Venus is a board game, published in 1988 by Avalon Hill, set in an unexplored part of the galaxy during a reawakening of galactic civilization. Players move around the board as traders discovering long forgotten pockets of civilization and buying and selling goods. The game can be played by one to six players. In tournaments it is usually played by four players. The solitaire version, which relies heavily on combat with a militaristic race, has different game mechanics.
The Company of Merchants of the Staple of England, the Merchants of the Staple, also known as the Merchant Staplers, is an English company incorporated by Royal Charter in 1319 dealing in wool, skins, lead and tin which controlled the export of wool to the continent during the late medieval period. The company of the staple may perhaps trace its ancestry back as far as 1282 or even further.
In European historiography, the term "staple" refers to the entire medieval system of trade and its taxation; its French equivalent is étape, and its German equivalent stapeln, words deriving from Late Latin stapula with the same meaning, derived from stabulum. designating a system that Hadrianus Junius considered to be of Gaulish origin.
The Port of Mainz is the port of Mainz, Germany. Lying on the western bank of the Rhine river, it has a long history reaching back through the Middle Ages to Roman times. The modern port facilities, existing for approximately 120 years in their general environs, are located mostly to the north of the city proper, and will be extended to the north of their current location during the coming years to make space for a new residential area.
The number of Chinese people in Namibia has grown tremendously since independence.
The information about Scotland's domestic and foreign trade during the Middle Ages is limited. In the early Middle Ages the rise of Christianity meant that wine and precious metals were imported for use in religious rites. Imported goods found in archaeological sites of the period include ceramics and glass, while many sites indicate iron and precious metal working. The slave trade was also important and in the Irish Sea it may have been stimulated by the arrival of the Vikings from the late eighth century.
The Kontor of Bruges was the Hanseatic kontor, one of the Hanseatic League's four major trading posts, in Bruges, County of Flanders. A kontor was a corporation (universitas) with a level of legal autonomy in a foreign non-Hanseatic city, the one of Bruges was formally organised in the 14th century. Bruges was a major Flemish port in the high and late Middle Ages. Flanders was a fiefdom of France until 1493, after that it belonged to the Holy Roman Empire.