Trade and Commerce
The
evolution of trade and commerce in England
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Bronze
Age
There is evidence
during the Bronze Age of metal working and tin mining, leather and cloth
manufacturer, pottery and salt production. There was domestic trade and trade
beyond the island’s shores.
Beaker Folk
reached Malham Moor and occupied sites on the Wolds. There is evidence that
they cultivated wheat and there is evidence of trade. They imported flat bronze
axes from Ireland. They exported ornaments made of Whitby jet. They traded in salt and had sea
connections with Scandinavia.
43 CE
Initially the
Romans did not venture north of the Humber/Don, but traded with the Parisii, though the Brigantes remained hostile.
71 CE
The Roman legions
brought with them craftsmen who made nails, shoes and pottery, or maintained
iron edged tools, lead piping and the like. The towns around the military zones
developed their own craftsmen and patterns of trade. The Roman army needed food,
clothes, horses, drink and the like. The towns developed forms of amusement and
relaxation and amenity and administration.
866 CE
In 866 CE, when
Northumbria was internally divided, the Vikings captured York. The Danes
changed the Old English name for York from Eoforwic,
to Jorvik. Jorvik became the Viking capital of its British lands and it
would reach a population of 10,000. Jorvik became an important economic and
trade centre for the Danes. Jorvik perhaps prospered from its trade with
Scandinavia.
Twelfth
century
Early trade was
focused on the market places of towns and boroughs,
sometimes on parish churchyards, and on York.
Specialist crafts tended to be focused on York.
Tithe payments to
the church sometimes provided them with a surplus and items which could be
resold. So an early focus of trade was for clergy and monks to travel from
place to place selling wares at farms and towns. An example is St
Godric of Finchale Priory. He began as a peddler
and became an entrepreneur. "He was wont to wander with small wares
around the villages and farmsteads of his own neighbourhood; but, in process of
time, he gradually associated himself by compact with city merchants.”
Wool was an
important commodity which could convert into other forms of wealth. William de Stuteville raised large sums from sheep in
Michaelmas 1203. Woolclip was stored in monastic (eg the Byland Abbey and Rievaulx
woolhouses) and baronial woolhouses,
for sampling by travelling buyers from Italy and Flanders.
Thirteenth
century
By the reign of
Edward I, the growth of towns, and formalisation of commerce and credit, a
growing population and significantly more money in circulation gave rise to a
greater feeling of prosperity, at least in towns.
Wool became the
most significant exports. By the early thirteenth century, 12m fleeces were
exported each year.
At this time the
road system was denser than today.
Charters allowing markets regularised trade.
Some markets were ancient, without known charters, Any grant of borough status
to a town implied a market.
Kirkbymoorside market yielded £2 6s 8d in 1281
to 1282 from market tolls.
Rural industry
Early
rural industry was focused on corn milling. Some castles and monasteries had
more specialised industries and most of them had bakehouses and breweries.
There is some evidence of medieval pottery, for instance pottergates
of Pickering and Gilling.
Corn
mills inevitably belonged to the manor. A water corn mill was a substantial
investment, but provided a lord with a steady source of income.
Occasionally
windmills were found on low flat lands.
Village
fulling mills were sited on streams, including at Farndale.
The
number of village blacksmiths suggests the extraction of ironstone at some
scale. Barned arrow rents suggest than iron was readily available in Farndale.
Real wages fell by about 20% between 1290 and 1350. Wars in Asia
Minor from the 1250s and wear with France disrupted trade.
In the second half of the thirteenth century there was a
disastrous fall in global temperatures, which led to a succession of storms,
frosts and droughts. The Great Strom of 1289 ruined harvests across the
country. The Thames froze in 1309 to 1310. In 1315 to 1316, two years of
continual rain ruined harvests. A great famine across Europe lasted for 7
years.
These were years of perhaps the worst economic disaster that
England has faced. Half a million people died of hunger and disease.
In 1349 came the Black Death. Indeed the plague attacked the
population four times in thirty years and became endemic for three centuries.
1350
War booty from the Hundred Years War with France boosted the
economy, and gave rise to an increase in the erection of religious and secular
buildings.
Wages rose and prices fell. Incomes increased by some 250% between
1300 and 1450. GDP reached over $1,000 per capita, as high as India or China in
1990. (Robert Tombs, The English and their
History, 2023, 126).
Working people had greater purchasing power. Brewing was
commercialised and ale was drunk widely. The English ‘pub’ was born.
Consumption grew of such things as furniture, pottery, and pewter.
This was merrie England.
A native cloth manufacturing industry spread from the boroughs
into the villages. Fulling mills at strong streams, such as the Dove at Farndale allowed a growth
of the cloth industry.
Sixteenth century
Mercantilism dominated economic thinking from the sixteenth century until its
rejection by Adam Smith who advocated free trade. Mercantilism was a
nationalist economic policy designed to maximize the exports and minimize the
imports for an economy. In other words, it sought to maximize the accumulation
of resources within the country and use those resources for one-sided trade.
The policy aimed to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a
current account surplus, and it included measures aimed at accumulating
monetary reserves by a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods.
Historically, such policies might have contributed to war and motivated
colonial expansion. Mercantilist theory varies in sophistication from one
writer to another and has evolved over time.
There is an In Our Time podcast on
Mercantilism.
The Industrial Revolution
See the Industrial
Revolution.
This was a period of exponential growth in the production of coal,
pig iron and the consumption of raw cotton, dwarfing the equivalent in France
and Germany.
The growth in non agricultural
production meant the population had to be fed by imports. Since 1822 Britain’s
balance of trade has remained permanently in deficit. It had to be balanced by
invisible earnings from banking, insurance and shipping, and returns from
foreign investments.
This brought new kinds of wealth (commerce, manufacturing, food
and drink, tobacco) and new wealthy families, like the Rothschilds and the
Guinness’s. Someone of the very richest, like the Duke of Westminster,
continued to derive their wealth from their land holdings, but now because they
benefitted from mineral rights.
There were very significant disparities of wealth:
By 1914, 92% of wealth was owned by 10% of the population.
In the 1860s:
· The
population was around 20M.
· 4,000
people had incomes over £5,000 per year.
· 1.4M
had around £100.
· A
farm labourer might earn £20.
· Women
workers earned about half of men’s wages.
There was a rise in wages from mid century,
with a significant rise in 1873.
However in rural areas, wages lagged behind.
Living standard improved with a fall in the birth rate. The
sharpest increase in spending was tobacco – the mechanically produced Wills
Woodbines at 1d for five were popular from the 1880s to the 1960s. The
consumption of alcohol fell sharply.
There were concerns in the second half of the nineteenth century
of risks of industrial decline. There were weaknesses. Britain was deeply
engaged in industries like textiles, but it was weaker than Germany, America
and France in new industries such as chemicals, electricity, cars and
aluminium. However Britain had a growing service sector based on its financial
services,. Oxford and Cambridge moved towards practical sciences, such as the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge.
The English apprenticeship system, produced skilled workers and middle class
education was increasingly relied upon for leadership.
(Robert Tombs, The English and
their History, 2023, 477 to 492).