Buyers & Sellers: Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

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. Authors B.Blonde, R.Britnell, D.Calabi, H. Deceulaer, D. Gentilcore, V. Harding, B. Lemire, F.Nevola, J.Shaw, E.Steegen, P.Stabel, J. Stobart, L. Van Aert, I. Van Damme, C.Walsh, E.Welch. Bruno Blonde is Director of the Centre for Urban History at the University of Antwerp. His current research interests include: urban history, social inequality and living standards, consumption and retailing history and historical social network analysis.