Counts, cities and commerce: a comparative study of the institutional foundations of international trade in late medieval Flanders, Holland and Zeeland

Over the past few decades, the historiography of international trade in late medieval Europe has been greatly influenced by the New Institutional Economics. Central in this perspective is the claim that economic outcomes were primarily determined by so-called institutions, or the rules of the economic game. The present article contributes to this debate by exploring the explanatory factors that impacted upon the choice of the main commercial markets in the Low Countries between 1384 and 1433. More specifically, it assesses the role of institutional frameworks in the decisions made by three important trading groups, the Hanse, the Genoese and the Portuguese, to base most of their trade either in the county of Flanders or in the competing counties of Holland and Zeeland. The article first compares the commercial privileges in which governments set out many of the rules that shaped the activities of foreign traders in these two areas and then considers the mechanisms that allowed merchants to resolve commercial conflicts. The overall conclusion is that institutions alone cannot explain the choice of markets by foreign merchants in the Low Countries during this period.