Transit Trade and Intercontinental Trade during the Late Middle Ages

Hungarian kings invited Western European colonists to settle in Transylvania from the twelfth century onwards. Eventually they became the privileged nation of the ‘Saxons’, active and successful economic middlemen in the region. This article examines a question that has a long history in the “forgotten region” of East Central Europe but is little known outside: the role of Saxon towns in the long-distance trade on the southern border of Transylvania during the Late Middle Ages. Since historians began to carry out research on this topic, beginning in the 1950s in Romania and then the 1970s in Hungary, no new or crucial documentary evidence has come to light. ¹ A little used source material, however, notably the customs registers of Sibiu from 1500 and Brașov from 1503, has good potential for new conclusions.