Book Chapter

An apparent paradox: wool as an alternative currency for merchants and weavers in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) in the 15th century

  • Nenad Fejic

This article examines the use of wool as an alternative currency in Dubrovnik in the first half of the 15th century. The actors of this practice were Catalan merchants who advanced wool to local weavers. In return, the weavers had to refund the credit by transforming the wool into fabrics. The quantity of fabrics returned was always greater than the quantity that could be produced from the wool received. This use of wool as an alternative currency corresponded to the mining prosperity in the Balkans. Silver, a precious metal, was exported by the Catalans, rather than being used to finance local wool production, which therefore had to resort to a local financing circuit, where wool, in the absence of silver currency, served as an alternative currency.

  • Keywords:
  • Dubrovnik,
  • Catalans,
  • wool,
  • silver,
  • currency,
  • ,
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Nenad Fejic

University of the French West Indies and Guiana, France

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  8. Cirkovic, Sima.1986. “Deux conjonctures dans l’industrie minière balkanique : XV-XVI siècles. » In Miniere e metallurgia secc. XIIIU-XVIII, Atti della settimana di studi in CD-rom, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi. Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini”.
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  • Publication Year: 2024
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

An apparent paradox: wool as an alternative currency for merchants and weavers in Dubrovnik (Ragusa) in the 15th century

Authors

Nenad Fejic

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0347-0.20

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Mezzi di scambio non monetari. Merci e servizi come monete alternative nelle economie dei secoli XIII-XVIII / Alternative currencies. Commodities and services as exchange currencies in the monetarized economies of the 13th to 18th centuries

Editors

Angela Orlandi

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

592

Publication Year

2024

Copyright Information

© 2024 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0347-0

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0346-3

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0347-0

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-0348-7

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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