Trade and Commerce

The evolution of trade and commerce in England

Headlines are in brown.

Dates are in red.

Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.

References and citations are in turquoise.

Context and local history are in purple.

Geographical context is in green.

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.

Economic growth meant that peasant families could manage their small holdings and earn some funds on the side, by spinning or brewing ale etc. This meant that they could marry earlier and they started to buy furniture, clothes, utensils, pottery etc and to eat puddings and pies and drink ale.

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.

1290

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).