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

Table 2:

Total Yield of the Sealing Fees Levied at the Champagne Fairs, 1285-1341 (in livres
tournois )^a

Source: Bourquelot (1867), II: 199. Lefèvre (1858), 446, reports additional figures but
without dates.

Notes

^a Figures have been rounded to nearest livre.

^b According to Bourquelot (1865), II: 195, ‘It is in 1320 that the yield is much the highest; I do not
know what circumstance explains this remarkable fact since, in 1320, the decline of the fairs had
already begun’.

Bourquelot’s figures on fair revenues thus remain a defensible indicator of economic
activity at the Champagne fairs, and strongly suggest that decline did not set in until
the later 1290s. At least one fair (that of Bar-sur-Aube) had a trade volume twice as
high in the 1275-96 period as in the early thirteenth century, and all the fairs saw
reasonably stable trade volumes in the 1275-96 period followed by an irreversible
downturn after 1298. Furthermore, these quantitative findings from the fairs
themselves are consistent with four other quantitative sources. The first is the analysis
of Italian and Provençal notarial registers, discussed earlier, showing that the
merchandise trade to the Champagne fairs increased in the second half of the
thirteenth century. The second is the yield of the Bapaume toll-station that Flemish
goods were required to pass on their way to the fairs, which suggest that up to at least
the early 1290s, ‘the volume of economic value traded from Flanders to France and
vice versa was growing’, but that from 1297 onward it was characterized by a
declining trend, sometimes involving complete stoppages which lasted for several
years, together with rising instability reflected in a growing reluctance by private toll-
farmers to pay to lease the toll-station.⁸³ The third is the volume of merchandise
passing the toll-station at Villeneuve near Chillon on Lake Geneva, one of the

⁸³ Finot (1894), 56-63; Laurent (1935), 124-6; Schulte (1900), 164.

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