Global Axess 2024 – David Abulafia: From Medieval Fairs to International Trade

How do we define ‘markets’ from a historical perspective? Thinking about medieval northern Europe, it is possible to distinguish between temporary seasonal markets, or fairs, such as the Skåne herring fairs, and permanent settlements, which, within the Baltic, might evolve into cities. For example, Birka in Sweden, and Hedeby in Denmark. Rather than offering local goods, many markets in this region had an intermediary role, and developed in political and cultural border zones, often in coastal or riverine locations, with ease of access to water routes – for example, the Viking and, later, Italian trading centres in and near Crimea. In order to attract international merchants as visitors, and often as settlers, a policy of neutrality was needed, exemplified by the regulations for the Flanders cloth fairs and in the conduct of the merchants of Amalfi. Local rulers, including city-states, sought to benefit from taxes on trade, though they often understood that low taxes boosted attendance and ultimately increased income. Mediterranean examples include Acre (in modern Israel), Constantinople and Sicily. Can such models be generalised globally? Evidence from Quanzhou (China) and Tenochtitlán (Mexico) sheds light on whether markets there functioned in similar ways.

David Abulafia is Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Academia Europaea, a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, and a visiting Beacon Professor at the University of Gibraltar. He is President of the Pharos Foundation, a newly established private funding body based in Oxford, which supports advanced research in the Humanities. He has written about the history of the Mediterranean and other seas, most recently the Black Sea. His books include The Great Sea: a Human History of the Mediterranean (Penguin, 2011), which won the British Academy Medal, and The Boundless Sea: a Human History of the Oceans (Penguin, 2019), which won the Wolfson History Prize. In 2003 he was appointed Commendatore dell’Ordine della Stella by the President of Italy, and in 2023 Commander of the Order of the British Empire ‘for services to scholarship’.

Justin Oliver Webb is a British journalist who has worked for the BBC since 1984. He is a former BBC North America Editor and the main co-presenter of BBC one's Breakfast News programme. Since August 2009, he has co-presented the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, and also regularly writes for the Radio Times.