ABSTRACT
From the second half of the fourteenth century Edinburgh with its port of Leith would take the lead, gaining a dominant role in the import and export of almost every piece of merchandise. Historians agree that the Scottish economy was booming in the thirteenth century, when wool and other sheep-derived products were in great demand for export. In the twelfth century Flemish merchants, on the hunt for increasingly more wool to meet the demand of an expanding textile industry, were instrumental in transforming the Scottish economy towards production for export and in founding and developing the Scottish burghs. Scotland's economy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was mainly geared towards supplying the Flemish and Artesian textile industries. A Scottish colony was likely in existence at Bruges' Schottendijk before 1280, and by the late thirteenth century reciprocal agreements were in place guaranteeing Flemish and Scottish merchants protection and freedom of trade.
