Mini: Commerce and Trade in Shakespeare's Time

In today's episode, we explore the fascinating history of trade and commerce in Britain, starting from prehistoric times and ending in Shakespeare's era. This episode topic was chosen by our by our Patreon patrons at the Gentry, Noble, and Royal Patron levels. Special thanks to Collective Action Comics Podcast, Claire Sharp, Elizabeth Sharman and Katie Smith!

Discover how the monetization of England's economy fueled the growth of trade and commerce, and how merchant guilds helped shape trade regulation and the urban landscape of England's bustling port towns. From the wool trade to the spice trade, Elyse and Kourtney examine the impact of commerce on everyday life, and how it challenged traditional notions of identity and community.

In addition, the episode will explain how joint-stock companies transformed the world of trade and investment, and how they contributed to the growth of England's global empire. Drawing on Shakespeare's plays and contemporary accounts, Elyse and Kourtney examine the legacy of early modern commerce on modern-day economies and societies.

Whether you're a Shakespeare enthusiast, a history buff, or just curious about the origins of global capitalism, this is an episode not to be missed!

Kourtney Smith (KS): Welcome to a Shakespeare Anyone mini-episode! In these mini-episodes, we’ll be exploring topics that are related to Shakespeare but aren’t necessarily connected to whatever play we’ve been discussing. 

Elyse Sharp (ES): And they’re mini, because well, they’re shorter than our other episodes. They’re like quartos if the regular episodes are folio editions.  

KS: In today’s episode, we’ll cover trade and commerce during Shakespeare’s time. Fun fact: this topic was selected by our Patreon patrons at the Gentry, Noble, and Royal Patron levels. Special thanks to Collective Action Comics Podcast, Claire Sharp, Elizabeth Sharman and Katie Smith!

ES: Now, today’s episode might feel a little unusual in that we will start by talking broadly about Britain’s development, from Prehistoric England up to early modern England.

KS: According to Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancıoğlu’s How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism, human development, even in its earliest stages, developed in two modes: the first is uneven development. The basis for uneven development lies in the ecological conditions of a human’s environment. In short, different bands developed due to the different conditions of their natural world.

ES: The second mode of human development is combined development. The basis for combined development lies in communities' continuous interactions with one another in causally significant ways in their own collective reproduction. The Paleolithic hunter-gatherers “depended for their biological reproduction on exogamous interaction with other bands, extending networks of consanguinity which provided the basis for periodic gatherings, shared language and security against environmental stress.”

KS: Eventually, bands developed social multiplicity, which developed political multiplicity – or various proto-states. As societies became more complex, Anievas and Nişancıoğlu argue, geographical factors became less fundamental to their growth and survival. The formation of states, social relations and cultural institutions became far more significant in strengthening one’s sphere of influence. Think Britain: a bog that became an Empire.

ES: So now let’s take it back to Britain’s origins. Prehistoric Britain, or the period before the written language, lasted for hundreds of thousands of years and is divided into three ages. The first age is the Stone Age, and this age is divided up into three sub-ages: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. During the Paleolithic period, archaic humans probably first arrived in Britain in 800,000 BCE; but by 30,000 BCE, Neanderthals are thought to have died out and modern humans walked Britain. Evidence of flint tools found in areas low in flint resources suggests that during this period, people moved over wide areas and that groups might have traveled to meet and exchange goods.

KS: During the Mesolithic period, from roughly 15,000 to 5,000 BCE, Mesolithic people further developed the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and followed a complex pattern for seasonal (or sometimes permanent) occupation. Farming was introduced by migrating European bands around 4500 BCE and material culture suggests distinct territories became permanently occupied by different groups. By the Neolithic period, from roughly 4,300 to 2,000 BCE, farming became widespread and led to a settled way of life. Homes, monuments, and burials are all evidence of building permanent communities.

ES: The second age in Britain’s prehistory is the Bronze Age, which lasted from roughly 2,200 to 750 BCE. The most important development was technology for copper, gold and…bronze metal working. Bronze replaced stone as the main material for tools and many materials were outsourced from Ireland, Wales and continental Europe. In addition, large livestock holdings developed in the lowlands and field systems became common practice. Settlements developed a larger variety of building types that were enclosed by fencing or ditching, suggesting the emergence of social elites.

KS: The last and final age of prehistoric Britain was the Iron Age, which lasted from roughly 750 BCE to 43 CE (hey - we’re now entering the common era!).The Iron Age was mostly rural, and people lived in small villages and farmsteads that were led by individuals or small groups. Iron working techniques were used to produce tools, like swords. Plows and axes made farming more efficient; wheat and barley were staple crops; timber was used for building homes, tools, carts and as fuel; and cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs provided their respective resources.

ES: Overall, prehistoric Britain developed first as nomadic hunter-gatherer economies that traded material goods with fellow bands. As hunter-gatherers permanently settled, tribes lay claim to specific goods and resources and traded with other territories both on the island and beyond. Around 100 BCE iron bars were used as currency, and coinage was developed under the model of continental Europe.

KS: What came next for Britain was a Roman age. Prior to Roman invasion, migration and trade between Britain and continental Europe was already well established. In fact, Roman general Julius Caesar made two expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BCE as part of a campaign to establish client rulers, or non-Roman quasi-rulers, and bring Britain into Rome’s sphere of influence. But by BC 43, Rome invaded, conquered and consolidated the lower half of England and Wales. Greco-Roman civilization replaced the Iron Age as Brits became culturally and legally Romans until around CE 411.

ES: Now let’s talk about Medieval England. After the fall of the Roman empire in roughly 476 CE, there was a centuries-long period of transition in which England developed into what most scholars and academics today call the Middle Ages. Early Middle Ages Britain was mostly rural with town centers set up to conduct trade. Similar to a modern farmer’s market, these markets were temporary and informal, though regulated under local kings. Evidence of pieces of boats in burial sites suggests traders traveled by boat to other markets. While trade was the central economy, coinage was used for taxation.

KS: By the 8th century, territories became kingdoms with social elites assuming the roles of kings and queens. Professor Robin Fleming suggests that, through taxation in the money economy and writing as a tool of government, the social elites were able to codify feudalism’s steep hierarchy. In a feudal system, more broadly, the system was in constant flux. According to Medieval historian Marc Bloch, there were two feudal ages: the pyramid-shaped trickle down system with kings, lords and serfs; and a feudal age following the Renaissance that looked more like a big net of ties.

ES: Due to feudalism’s murkiness, Dr. Eleanor Janega prefers the label “manorialism” because it describes the political system more generally, and focuses on the basic economic unit of the manor of a landed estate. Medieval society generally includes these qualifiers: a subject peasantry, service tenements, a class of specialized warriors, ties of obedience of protection, fragmentation of authority, and survival of associations. According to Dr. Janega, this was not a government, but tactics to maintain power.

KS: Medieval feudalism (or manorialism) lasted for roughly seven centuries. During and following serfdom, England transitioned into a system of trade and commerce called mercantilism. Mercantilism is an economic system which aims to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It’s regarded as an early form of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system where the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit. Commerce, on the other hand, is simply the interchange of goods or commodities between individuals or states. Early artisans and merchants used commerce for merchant trade and created the first businesses. These merchants exchanged goods and services directly with the public for the purpose of making money. 

ES: A central feature of mercantilism (and perhaps the most famous institution of the mercantile economy) was merchant guilds, especially the guild associations of long-distance traders. According to Oscar Gelderblom and Regina Graff’s The Rise and Fall of Merchant Guilds: Re-thinking the Comparative Study of Commercial Institutions in Premodern Europe, while “formal associations of traders existed in the ancient world, and they may have been formed as early as the eighth century in medieval Europe,” guilds came into greater prominence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 

KS: Merchant guilds developed as a response to the difficulties faced by merchants who engaged in long-distance travel. This differentiated the merchant guilds from guilds that organized for the interests of local craftspeople and retailers. As traveling merchants often had to cross political boundaries, they could not simply rely on local governments or rulers for protection and infrastructure, like the local guilds could. Local guilds were made up of skilled craftspeople, especially those who manufactured luxury goods.

ES: Members of both merchant guilds and local guilds agreed to rules that governed how their trade operated, such as the quantity and quality of their goods, their shipping methods or, even, how they trained apprentices. In some cases, guild members were sworn to also “help each other in cases of fraud, violence, and personal hardship.” In return, guilds provided infrastructure for their members beyond enforcement of contracts with localities: from organizing daily exchanges to protection against theft to providing housing to facilitating the balance of supply and demand. 

KS: The Elizabethan and Jacobean eras actually saw the start of the decline of merchant guilds in England as well as elsewhere in Europe and a movement towards “entrepreneurs operating individually within informal networks of family and friends.” This was due to changes within local governments, who began to think it was in their best interest to protect local businesses. During this time, merchant guilds transitioned into more social organizations and opened up membership to non-traders. They catered to the religious needs of their local members, often having their own chapel or a strong relationship with a local parish or monastery, and sometimes owned guild burial grounds and founded fraternities. These now more social organizations defined the social lives of their local members but also allowed them contact with traveling foreign merchants. 

ES: Coinciding with the decline of merchant guilds came the earliest English joint-stock companies. These proto-corporations were typically created by royal charter and allowed individuals (or shareholders) to pool their resources in order to share profits and minimize risk. Joint-stock companies would eventually exist across industries in early modern London. In fact, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men) were a joint-stock theatre company, and Shakespeare was a stockholder. Joint-stock companies were similar to modern day conglomerations, such as the Walt Disney Company, General Electric, or Berkshire Hathaway, as joint-stock companies also often had many sub-organizations operating under the same royal charter. 

KS: The earliest English joint-stock companies emerged in order to facilitate long-distance trade and exploration, as well as mitigate the risks inherent with long-distance travel. The Muscovy Company, also known as the Russian Company or the Muscovy Trading Company, was the first joint-stock company chartered in England in 1555 by Mary I. They maintained a monopoly on trade between England and Russia until 1698, with overland trading routes that led them south to Astrakhan and through Persia, that allowed them to trade English cloths for silks and spices on the Silk Road. 

ES: Other English joint-stock companies, such as the Turkey Company and the English East India Company, later opened additional land trade routes through the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. However, overland travel became increasingly difficult and impractical, so the English turned to looking for better trade routes via the sea. In 1577, Sir Francis Drake set out to circumnavigate the globe, perhaps searching for a north-west passage that would be a better route to India. He left England with five ships and returned in 1581 with only one surviving (and relatively small) ship. While other countries, specifically the Portuguese, already had explorers who had circumnavigated the globe successfully, Drake’s trip was seen as a major accomplishment for the English. 

KS: Two years later, in 1583, Humphrey Gilbert landed on the island of Newfoundland and claimed it for England, consequently creating England’s first colony in the Americas. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh founded the colony of Roanoke, which lasted less than six years as a 1590 expedition to the area found no trace of the colony. Most modern day historians agree with the legends and oral histories of the indigenous descendants of the tribes that would have encountered the Roanoke colonists: the Roanoke colonists were not lost, but likely assimilated into the local indigenous culture. However, some scholars question this due to lack of archaeological evidence. 

ES: After Roanoke, England diverted resources from establishing colonies to its efforts to defeat Spain in the Anglo-Spanish War. Due to this, it wasn’t until 1607, four years after Elizabeth’s death, that the next English colony was established in America. The colony, named in her honor, was the colony of Virginia. England continued to colonize much more of the Americas and, unfortunately, the world.

KS: During this time period, early modern England also saw the start of a rapid increase in the monetization of the English economy. Due to the results of exploration (and exploitation) of the West African coast by the Portuguese in the mid-1400s to about 1520, as well as the exploration of the Americas, European countries saw an influx of precious metals which made minting lower-value coins easier and less expensive.This lowered the cost to participate in markets, allowing for the increase in entrepreneurs that replaced merchant guilds, which, in turn, led to greater specialization in labor. It became easier to make and receive payments, which made it easier for businesses to pay employees and for employees to work additional days. 

ES: But what industries were these early modern people working in? At the start of the early modern period, 80-90 percent of the population of Europe lived in rural areas, and the economy was dominated by agriculture. Most manufacturing was done at a small-scale – processed food, such as bread, and manufactured items, like clothes and brooms, were created within households or communities. However as demand for clothing grew, textile production became a proto-industry of its own, which led to some families completely abandoning agriculture for manufacturing. In fact, early modern England’s largest export was wool and woolen cloth, which was traded abroad in the major European markets in Antwerp and Amsterdam for goods from other countries.

KS: As money, industry, and trade grew in early modern England and Europe, it did so by simultaneously exploiting the labor of black and brown people who were stolen and enslaved from Africa and the Americas. In 1562, John Hawkins pioneered the English involvement in the “triangle trade.” In exchange for Spanish gold and jewels, Hawkins supplied Spanish colonies in the Americas with men and women whom Hawkins captured or bought in Africa as replacements for the indigenous peoples of the Americas who were enslaved by Spanish colonizers and were now dying from European diseases. Hawkins then sold the gold and jewels back in England. He became the first English merchant to profit from slave trade, and by 1690, England would become the largest shipper of enslaved people from Africa. This is certainly a dark reminder of the effects the economy has had on human development.  

ES: But let’s bring it back to Shakespeare before we wrap up this episode. The economy is written everywhere in Shakespeare’s plays: characters are constantly referring to coinage; trades and industries; borrowing or bargaining; discussing exploration; Midsummer’s mechanicals are merchants and Biondello in The Taming of the Shrew is a traveling merchant. Even if references to the Elizabethan and Jacobean economy are anachronistic in the settings of some plays, their presence makes sense considering the prominence of the economy on partial-theatre-owner Shakespeare and his mercantile audiences.

KS: And that’s the early modern economy and Shakespeare!

ES: Thank you for listening to this episode.

Quote of the Episode:

KS: From Cymbeline, act five, scene one, spoken by Cymbeline, “Blest pray you be, That after this strange starting from your orbs,/ You may reign in them now.”

Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Kourtney Smith and Elyse Sharp.

Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.

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Works referenced:

Anievas, Alexander, and Kerem Nişancioğlu. “Rethinking the Origins of Capitalism: The Theory of Uneven and Combined Development.” How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism, Pluto Press, 2015, pp. 43–63. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183pb6f.7. Accessed 21 Apr. 2023.

Brunton, Deborah. “6.3 Work and Trade.” Early Modern Europe: An Introduction, 2016, www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/early-modern-europe-introduction/content-section-6.3.

Grafe, Regina, and Oscar Gelderblom. “The Rise and Fall of the Merchant Guilds: Re-Thinking the Comparative Study of Commercial Institutions in Premodern Europe.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 40, no. 4, 2010, pp. 477–511. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20685545. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Hair, Paul; Law, Robin (1998). "The English in western Africa to 1700". In Nicholas Canny (ed.). Oxford History of the British Empire volume 1: The Origins of Empire. British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth century. Oxford: Oxford university press. pp. 241–263. ISBN 978-0-19-164734-5.

Janega, Eleanor. and Waters, Luke, “Historical Materialism 5: Feudalism, Finally”, We’re Not So Different Podcast, WNSD Podcast, 15 Nov. 2021. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Janega, Eleanor and Waters, Luke, “Historical Materialism 11: Colonialism”, We’re Not So Different Podcast, WNSD Podcast, 19 Jan. 2022. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Jarman, Cat. “Britain After Rome”, Gone Medieval, performance by Robin Fleming, History Hit, 29 Aug. 2022, Accessed 24 Apr. 2023.

Palma, N. (2018). Money and modernization in early modern England. Financial History Review, 25(3), 231–261. doi:10.1017/s0968565018000185

Picard, Liza. “Exploration and Trade in Elizabethan England.” British Library, 15 Mar. 2016, www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/exploration-and-trade-in-elizabethan-england.

“Prehistoric Britain: Visit Resource for Teachers”, British Museum, The British Museum, Background Information pp. 4-11, https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/visit-resource_prehistoric-britain-KS2.pdf, Accessed 21 Apr. 2023

Schmitthoff, M. “The Origin of the Joint-Stock Company.” The University of Toronto Law Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 1939, pp. 74–96. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/824598. Accessed 29 Apr. 2023.