ABSTRACT
The integration of markets between 1050 and 1330 depended on the development of markets. This chapter addresses the developments as phenomena important to the commercial growth of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It explains how the development of local markets and fairs contributed to the growth of long-distance trade and examines the source of improving market integration over long distances. The supposition that rural and small-town markets existed to supply larger towns rests on the assumption that dealers there sold in bulk. Yet normally the chief purpose of urban and village markets was to serve the interests of local tradesmen and consumers, and most of the trade that took place there was by retail. The significance of mercantile organization for the development of in-ternational commodity markets, and the marginal relevance of local markets in this trade, is most apparent in the handling of the wool trade by the great Italian trading companies of the late thirteenth century.
