ABSTRACT
From the Late Middle Ages the Baltic zone supplied Western Europe with grain, industrial raw materials such as flax and hemp, timber and timber by-products. In return the West provided salt, fish, cloth, wine, and increasingly during the early modern era colonial goods. Thus markets on the Southern and Eastern Baltic coasts, and subsequently the Northern coast as well, and the producing areas in the hinterlands became integrated into the emerging ‘World Economy’, with a growing international division of labour. In this process of integration, Dutch merchants and shippers played the key role.
