IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB630033652

‘Your flexible friend’: the bill of exchange in theory and practice in the fifteenth century† (2021)

Bolton, Jim (Author)
Guidi-Bruscoli, Francesco (Author)

Economic History Review
Volume: 74
Issue: 4
Pages: 873-891
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

DOI: 10.1111/ehr.13070

URI: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ehr.13070

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

The bill of exchange was the most important written instrument in the international financial world of the later middle ages. Using the evidence of nearly 2,000 bills of exchange, protested bills of exchange, and letters of advice recorded in the ledgers of Filippo Borromei & Partners of Bruges and London, 1436–8, we argue that it was a far more flexible instrument than has previously been thought. The maturity of bills could be changed by agreement rather than necessarily using the standard usance periods, and payment by instalments occurred, extending the length of the ‘loan’ considerably. In practice, exchange rates varied from day to day and within the day itself, while bills were offered as sureties for the fulfilment of other contracts. We also confirm the arguments of other historians that the main purpose of this instrument was the transfer of capital back and forth across western Europe, usually along well-known axes such as London to Venice or Bruges to Barcelona, with exchange and re-change playing only a minimal role in the Borromei's operations. As at the Lyon fairs 100 years later, the ‘flexible friend’ helped make the world of international, regional, and local trade and finance go round.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB630033652

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Jerome Greenfield; (2020)
‘As solid as and more precious than gold’: Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard, John Law and the legacy of the assignats in nineteenth-century France (/p/isis/citation/CBB638116571/)

Book Jeffrey Sklansky; (2017)
Sovereign of the Market: The Money Question in Early America (/p/isis/citation/CBB762518399/)

Article Alexia Yates; (2021)
Investor Letters and the Everyday Practice of Finance in Nineteenth-Century France (/p/isis/citation/CBB584393687/)

Article Trevor Jackson; (2020)
Between Independence and Impunity: The Theory of Proto-Central Banking After the Crisis of 1720 (/p/isis/citation/CBB536726846/)

Article Thea Goldring; (2020)
The Greater Fool: Paper, Illusion, and Time in Representations of the South Sea Bubble (/p/isis/citation/CBB413297340/)

Article Susan P. Mains; (2022)
Unruly Landscapes and the City of London. Mobility Studies, Street Photography, and Stephen McLaren's The Crash (/p/isis/citation/CBB144486236/)

Article Patrice Baubeau; Eric Monnet; Angelo Riva; Stefano Ungaro; (2021)
Flight‐to‐safety and the credit crunch: A new history of the banking crises in France during the Great Depression (/p/isis/citation/CBB619097743/)

Article Jonathan Levy; (2017)
Capital as Process and the History of Capitalism (/p/isis/citation/CBB508309992/)

Book Youssef Cassis; Giuseppe Telesca; (2018)
Financial Elites and European Banking: Historical Perspectives. (/p/isis/citation/CBB066634132/)

Chapter Matthew Kelly; (2018)
The Thames Barrier: Climate Change, Shipping and the Transition to a New Envirotechnical Regime (/p/isis/citation/CBB990507131/)

Article Brian Lancaster; (2015)
Jean-Baptiste Say's First Visit to England (1785/6) (/p/isis/citation/CBB797940838/)

Book Kühn, Sebastian; (2011)
Wissen, Arbeit, Freundschaft: Okonomien und soziale Beziehungen an den Akademien in London, Paris und Berlin um 1700 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001220514/)

Article Orton, David C.; Morris, James; Locker, Alison; Barrett, James H.; (2014)
Fish for the City: Meta-Analysis of Archaeological Cod Remains and the Growth of London's Northern Trade (/p/isis/citation/CBB001422010/)

Thesis Bowtell, A; (cited 2010)
A Medieval London Hospital: Elsyngspital 1330--1536 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001567233/)

Book Angelo Cattaneo; Francisco Contente Domingues; (2018)
Shores of Vespucci: A Historical Research of Amerigo Vespucci's Life and Contexts (/p/isis/citation/CBB640429234/)

Book Kopernik, Mikolaj; Wyczanski, Andrzej; (2007)
Pisma pomniejsze (/p/isis/citation/CBB000930187/)

Chapter Niccolò Guicciardini; (2015)
Proofs and Contexts: the Debate between Bernoulli and Newton on the Mathematics of Central Force Motion (/p/isis/citation/CBB805053813/)

Book Schmidt, Benjamin; (2015)
Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe's Early Modern World (/p/isis/citation/CBB001510111/)

Article Margócsy, Dániel; (2013)
The Fuzzy Metrics of Money: The Finances of Travel and the Reception of Curiosities in Early Modern Europe (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213479/)

Article Popplow, Marcus; (2012)
Technik als Faktor des Europäischen Sonderwegs in die Industrialisierung (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420901/)