Foreign trade was the great wheel setting the machinery of society into motion and was the driving force of the nation. The ship was often chosen as the symbol of this dynamic. This chapter first describes the role played by the shipping industry in the trade of agricultural goods. It was not only around the sea-routes that international trade flourished, however. Professor van der Wee has drawn attention to the motor function performed by the transcontinental route between Flanders and south Germany-Italy. The chapter then looks at consumption, with a view to discovering other features of interest to an analysis of some of the fundamental conditions of European trade in the period 1500-1750. One way of establishing a birds eye view of European trade is to approach it geographically. Another is to analyse trade in terms of commodities. The chapter describes both these complementary approaches. Finally, it focuses on European markets and how they were organized.