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



Champagne fairs, from three to four days; Bassermann interprets this as indicating an
increased volume of cloth-trade between Flemish and Italian merchants at the fairs.80

So if the fairs continued to flourish as merchandise and money markets long after the
1260s, when did they begin to decline? A quantitative indication is provided by
Bourquelot’s figures on the tax yield of the fairs, shown in Table 1. The only fair for
which a pre-1275 figure is available, that of Bar-sur-Aube, shows revenues doubling
between 1212 and the 1270s, slightly declining in the 1280s, recovering to a peak in
1296, and then falling off sharply from 1298 onwards. The four fairs of Troyes and
Provins largely mirror this pattern, with healthy revenues in 1275, decline (in Troyes)
or stagnation (in Provins) in the 1280s, a remarkable highpoint in 1296, and a
precipitous fall from 1298 on. The combined revenues of all five fairs (excluding
sparsely documented Lagny) show rising revenues up to 1296, followed by
catastrophic decline.

Bautier acknowledges that Bourquelot’s figures show 1296 to have been the absolute
high-point of the fairs, but seeks to cast doubt on their reliability by claiming that they
include only the direct yield of the fairs, neglecting revenues from sealing fair-debts,
whose increase, he argues, ‘must have almost compensated for the (possibly desired)
diminution of the [direct yield]’.81 But as Lefèvre pointed out, the period between the
1280s and the 1320s saw a decline in the fairs’ commercial revenues (rentals on halls,
stalls and hostels, plus seigneurial dues on the fair-trade) and a rise in their
administrative revenues (forfeits and fines, sealing and default fees); he interprets ‘the
expensiveness of the seal as a particular index of decadence’ for the fairs.82
Furthermore, figures on sealing revenues, assembled in Table 2, show Bautier’s
arithmetic to be unfounded. Sealing revenues were minor before 1290, and even at
their peak around 1320 were insufficient to bring total revenues of any fair up to its
pre-1298 level.

80 Bassermann (1911), 21.

81 Bautier (1942-3), 169 n. 3.

82 Lefèvre (1858), 445-6; Alengry (1915), 203.

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