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Currency Manipulation in the Middle Ages: The Case of Louis de Male, Count of Flanders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2011

H. Van Werveke
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Extract

It is well known that, in contrast to the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages, and especially the later Middle Ages, suffered from great coinage instability. Now that we, in our turn, are confronted with identical difficulties, some historians would explain the currency manipulations of the Middle Ages by motives of the same kind as those that have inspired some devaluations in the twentieth century. They ask themselves if perhaps the princes of that time were not trying, as some modern governments have tried, to influence economic life and in particular to stimulate international commerce by devaluation of the currency.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 31 , December 1949 , pp. 115 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1949

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References

1 Laurent, H., La loi de Gresham au moyen âge. Essai sur la circulation monétaire entre la Flandre et le Brabant à la fin du XIVe si:ècle (Brussels, 1933), pp. 7–8Google Scholar: ‘Ces diverses causes — insuffisance de la production de métal fin, balance commerciale insuffisante, perte par le jeu normal de la circulation — expliquent la raréfaction continue du stock de métal fin, qui coīncide avec un accroissement des besoins du commerce. Maîtres de la monnaie, les princes se trouvérent dans la nécessité de satisfaire ces réclamations. Il y avait une opinion publique qui demandait un accroissement des signes monétaires, qui poussait aux mutations des monnaies. Le commerce a toujours été inflationniste. Or, ces solicitations des classes commerçantes se multipliaient, au moment même oú les besoins des trésors des princes devenaient, eux aussi, plus nombreux et plus pressants, par suite de l'extensioh de leur politique, de la complication de leur systéme d'institutions, de nombreuses autres causes. Dés lors, la tentation était trop forte de satisfaire à la fois les besoins du commerce et ceux des trésoreries.’ I do not know of any evidence of Flemish merchants of the fourteenth century asking the count to reduce the intrinsic value of his currency.

2 A summary of this lecture, with full references to the available evidence, will shortly be published under the title ‘De muntslag in Vlaanderen onder Lodewijk van Malé, in Mededelingen van de Koninhlijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgié, Klasse der Letteren (Antwerp-Utrecht). See also, on the coins of Louis de Male, but mainly from a numismatic point of view, Enno Van Gelder, H., ‘De munten van Vlaanderen onder Lodewijk van Nevers en Lodewijk van Male’, Jaarboeh van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Genootschap voor Munt- en Penningkunde, xxxiij–xxxiv (1946–47), pp. 122–31.Google Scholar

1 Recherches sur les monnaies des comtes de Flandre depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à l'avènement de la maison de Bourgogne (Ghent, 1857).

2 PP. 168–9.

1 We have no direct evidence for Flanders, but a study of the number of the hearths in the neighbouring and somewhat less populous principality of Brabant between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, as compared with the situation in 1910, suggests such a figure. See Cuvelier, J., Les dénombrements defoyers en Brabant (XlVe–XVIe siècle) (Commission royale d'histoire, 4° series, Brussels, 1912–13), i, p. cccx.Google Scholar

1 Laurent, H., op. cit., and Laurent, H. and Quicke, F., L'accession de la maison de Bourgogne aux duchés de Brabant et de Limbourg (1383–1407) (Mémoires de l'Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des lettres, 8° series, Brussels, 1939). pp. 402–33.Google Scholar

1 Inventaire des archives de la chambre des comptes, ii (Brussels, 1845), p. 32, n0 2702; vi (Brussels, 1931), p. 103, n” 47,046.

1 Inventaire des archives de la chambre des comptes, iii (Brussels, 1851), pp. 242, 246, n0” 18,103–5, 18,195–6.

2 Some authors of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries were well aware that such a policy was in the long run disastrous for the finances of the princes. See, for example, Bernardo Davanzati, A Discourse upon Coins (London, 1696), pp. 20, 21 (the author lived in the sixteenth century), and Mun, Thomas, England's Treasure by Forraign Trade (London, 1664, reprinted Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar, cap. viii, p. 29. (I owe these references to the kindness of Professor R. De Roover.)

3 Van Werveke, H., ‘De ekonomische en sociale gevolgen van de muntpolitiek der graven van Vlaanderen (1337–1433)’ (Annales de la Société d'Emulation de Bruges, lxxiv, 1931, pp. 1–15).Google Scholar

1 Recueil de documents relatifs à l'histoire de l'industrie drapiére en Flandre (Commission royale d'histoire, 40 series, 4 vols., 1906–24).

2 H. Van Werveke, De kooptnan-ondernemer en de ondernemer in de Vlaamsche lakennijverheid van de middeleeuwen (Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, viii, n0 4, 1946—with a summary in French).