Enterprising villages, seignorial control and urban monopolies : rural trade venues in Holland, England and Flanders in the late Middle Ages

Abstract

Around 1280 the villages of Akersloot, Uitgeest and Wormer in the district of Kennemerland received exemption from the river tolls in Holland as a reward for supporting the count in his war against the Frisians. The toll privilege suggests an early involvement of the villages in regional or even interregional trade, but for the next fifty years or so the sources remain silent on the subject of rural commerce in Kennemerland. Then, in the year 1347, at the outbreak of the succession conflict between the later count Willem V and his mother Margaretha, Willem signed a document that prohibited weekly markets in the villages of Kennemerland and ordered the villagers to frequent the urban market of Alkmaar instead. The privilege was most likely intended to gain the much-needed support of Alkmaar at this time of political upheaval.