Institutions and the Political Economy of Sixteenth-Century Antwerp Commerce

Introduction So far, the story told about the ascent of Low Countries merchants operating out of Antwerp in the sixteenth century may not strike the reader as unique or revolutionary. Other groups such as the Florentines in the thirteenth century, the south Germans in the eenth century, the English Merchant Adventurers in the sixteenth century and Dutch merchants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have similarly relied on specialization in the export of local products, on advanced commercial and nancial techniques and on the provision of market infrastructure. Yet there is something odd about sixteenth-century Antwerp when one considers the historiography and compares the city’s political economy with that of other commercial cities.