What Lessons for Economic Development Can We Draw from the Champagne Fairs?

no institutional discrimination for or against any group of merchants - although this
policy changed under the kings of France, as we shall see shortly.

The ascendancy of the Champagne fairs was thus strongly favoured by the policies of
the political authorities. The counts of Champagne provide a vivid example of the
importance of the political authorities in providing the minimal requirements for
market-based economic activity to flourish. They guaranteed security, property rights
and contract enforcement, they built infrastructure, they regulated weights and
measures, they supported foreign merchant lenders against politically powerful
debtors, and they provided a level playing field between foreign merchants and locals.
The distinguishing characteristic of all these institutional services was that the counts
provided them not as particularized privileges granted to specific merchant guilds or
communities, but rather as generalized institutional guarantees issued ‘to all
merchants, merchandise, and all manner of persons coming to the fair’.⁶⁸ They were
then maintained and extended by a princely ruler in the interests of protecting ‘his
fairs’ as a piece of property that delivered a valuable stream of revenues.

3. The Decline of the Fairs and ‘Particularized’ Institutional Provision

If the Champagne fairs enjoyed this fortunate combination of institutional services,
then why did they ultimately lose their ascendancy over international trade in
medieval Europe? Examining the decline of the Champagne fairs casts further light on
the sources of their earlier success.

A first issue relates to the timing of the fairs’ decline. Bautier argued that the fairs
began to decline as merchandise markets soon after the middle of the thirteenth
century, while retaining their role as money markets until the early fourteenth
century.⁶⁹ Much conventional wisdom follows this assessment, so it is important to
examine its empirical basis.⁷⁰ Bautier bases his conclusion about the timing of decline
solely on two documents of 1262 and 1320 which show Italian merchants obtaining
funds at the Champagne fairs for cloth purchases actually undertaken in Flemish and

⁶⁸ Alengry (1915), 38. For a detailed discussion of ‘particularized’ and ‘generalized’ institutional
provision, see Ogilvie (2005).

⁶⁹ Bautier (1953), 135-6.

⁷⁰ Verlinden (1965), 133; Reyerson (2000), 68; Terrasse (2005), 72, 136.

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