Une foire en Champagne au XIIIe siècle (A fair in Champagne in the 13th century), engraving in Album historique, publié sous la direction de M. Ernest Lavisse (1898), Paris, Armand Colin & Cie
The Champagne fairs were an annual cycle of trade fairs which flourished in different towns of the County of Champagne in Northeastern France in the 12th and 13th centuries,[1] originating in local agricultural and stock fairs. Each fair lasted about 2 to 3 weeks. The Champagne fairs, sited on ancient land routes and largely self-regulated through the development of the Lex mercatoria ("merchant law"), became an important engine in the reviving economic history of medieval Europe, "veritable nerve centers"[2] serving as a premier market for textiles, leather, fur, and spices. At their height, in the late 12th and the 13th century, the fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers, with Genoa in the lead,[3][4][5] dominating the commercial and banking relations operating at the frontier region between the north and the Mediterranean.[citation needed] The Champagne fairs were one of the earliest manifestations of a linked European economy, a characteristic of the High Middle Ages.[6]
^M. M. Postan, E Miller eds., Cambridge Economic History of Europe, (Cambridge University Press) 1952, vol. ii, p. 230
^R. L. Reynolds, "The market for northern textiles in Genoa, 1179–1200", Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire8.3 (1929:495–533); Reynolds, "Merchants of Arras and the overland trade with Genoa in the twelfth century", Revue belge9.2 (1930:495–533); Reynolds, "Genoese trade in the late twelfth century, particularly in cloth from the fairs of Champagne", Journal of Economic and Business History3.3 (1931:362–81).
^Cite error: The named reference Cam was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Elspeth M. Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd Edition, London Folio Society 2005. ISBN0-900952-38-5, pp. 65–66