Buyers and Sellers: Retail circuits and practices in medieval and early modern Europe (STUDIES IN EUROPEAN URBAN HISTORY (1100-1800))

Consumption is now a critical issue in late medieval and early modern historical and cultural studies. While we know increasingly about regulatory systems, we know much less about the daily practice of buying and selling. This book brings together contributions from urban historians, social historians and art historians to explore the issues of exchange, shopping behavior, social interactions, gender and physical space. Contributions deal with Italy, the Low Countries and England. In so doing lines of continuity between the medieval and early modern period are stressed. In addition, some critical questions are raised. Were markets necessarily less "modern" compared to "fixed shops"? How did changing consumers and consumer patterns interact with the retailer? The essays published also stress the need to study different commercial circuits in their context.