Antwerp: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:41, 2 March 2005

Revision as of 18:47, 6 March 2005

Line 14:

The [[Brabant]]ine city of Antwerp succeeded [[Bruges]] in [[Flanders]] as the major port city and center of the economy of northern Europe, but became, as [[Fernand Braudel]] pointed out "the center of the ''entire'' international economy— something Bruges had never been even at its height." (Braudel 1985 p. 143) He dates the opening of the new order with the arrival of the first Portuguese ship laden with [[pepper]] and cinnamon in 1501. Antwerp's "Golden Age" is tightly linked to the "[[Age of Exploration]]".

In its short century of greatness Antwerp clung to some disadvantages: without a long-distance merchant fleet and governed by an oligarchy of banker-aristocrats forbidden to engage in trade, the economy of Antwerp was in the hands of the foreigners who made the city international, ships from Venice or Ragusa, Catalonia por Portugal met in the port where Portuguese pepper and silks met GremanGerman silver. Antwerp wisely embraced a policy of toleration: even today Antwerp is nicknamed "The Jerusalem of the West" because of its large orthodox [[Jew|Jewish]] ([[hasidism|hasidic]]) community. Antwerp in its greatness was not even a "free" city: it had been readsorbed into the duchy of Brabant in 1406 and was controlled from Brussels.

[[Image:Guildhouses_Antwerp.jpg|thumb|right|260px||16th-century [[Guild]]houses in the Grote Markt]]

Antwerp experienced three booms during its century, the first based on the pepper market, a second launched by American silver coming from Seville that came to an abrupt end with the bankruptcy of Spain in 1557, and a third boom, after the stabilizing [[Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis]], 1559 that was based on industrial production of textiles.