London and its Merchants in the Italian Archives, 1380–1530

Anglo-Italian commercial relations in the Late Middle Ages have been studied by several scholars in the last decades. However, not many of them make full use of account-books and commercial correspondence written by Italian companies active in London (but currently held by Italian public and private archives). The Tuscan area is particularly rich with these documents, which cover the whole period with only a few interruptions. These business sources provide detailed information about the daily management of the firms, their trade and the merchandises (quantities, prices, transaction costs, etc.). But also – more broadly – they allow a study of the personal and trading relations both within community of Italian merchants in London and outside, with local institutions and local merchants. Moreover the ledgers are full of accounts held by English merchants who were doing business with the bank: some of them run for several years, others for few transactions only, in the space of few days or few weeks. Given the lack of private documents written by English merchants in the period, the books of the Italians businessmen provide a unique insight for the study of their activity and the use they made of the foreign mercantile companies, whose services gave them the opportunity to penetrate the commercial networks linking North-western Europe with the Mediterranean. In particular there are dozens of mercers and grocers, but also merchants of the staple of Calais, goldsmiths, drapers, ironmongers, etc. The text is accompanied by tables showing the names of these merchants: this will enable scholars to follow some of them through time and also to see possible familial continuity.