medieval-atlas/economic-development/238

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Overseas trade: the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Scottish economy was extent was limited, they immediately became a most valuable source transformed by an unprecedented upsurge in economic activity that of royal revenue. The earliest surviving series are for the period occurred throughout western Europe. The rapid expansion of between 1327 and 1333. There are a few stray returns fQr the I 340s. international trade brought a great influx of foreign traders into and a more or less continuous run from 1361 until 1599. Scotland, mainly in search of wool, skins (cowhides, sheepskins. Until the Wars of Independence there was an almost wild animal pelts) and fish. The creation of burghs was a spin-off continuous expansion of the Scottish economy and it seems likely from this. geared to the regulation of trading activity and to the that by the 1290s Scotland was, relative to England. substantially collection of tolls on commercial traffic. Scotland became, after more prosperous, more so than it has been ever since (see below. England, the most important wool producer in Europe and this wool Taxation in medieval Scotland). The country was divided into three was mainly exported to Flanders and Artois. The herring and cod economic regions, each with a majorentrepot: Berwick south ofthe fisheries were remarkably prolific and the trade in wool fells and Forth. Perth in central Scotland and Aberdeen beyond the Mounth. cowhides was also important. Southern Scotland was always the richest part of the country. The Until the late thirteenth century only what later became earliest surviving customs accounts show that receipts from southern known as the Petty Customs were levied: tolls on imports, exports Scotland were slightly higher than those from the other two regions and internal traffic. But, apart from tariff rates, no record ofthese has combined. with the central and northern regions almost equal. This survived. By the fourteenth century they had become accepted as an disparity was to widen inexorably as the Scottish economy conintegral part of the burghs' own revenues(see below, Burgh farms). tracted throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By the This change was probably precipitated by the introduction of what 1420s the proportion ofsouthern receipts had risen to overtwo-thirds later became known as the Great Customs: on wool, hides and of the national total and by the 1530s to nearly three-quarters. wool fells, which had been levied in England since 1275. The rates of duty were far higher than the Petty Customs and, although their Until drained in modern times, the wide marshes between the Firth of Forth and the highlands of Dunbartonshire formed an all-but-impenetrable barrier between north and south, other than across the fords and bridge near Stirling, The spine of the Grampians (known in the Middle Ages as The Mounth) formed a comparable barrier from Loch Leven in the west to Nigg in the east, creating two distinct watersheds along which the trade routes passed. In each of the resultant regions -sometimes referred to in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as Lothian, Scotia and Moray -a predominant burgh had emerged by the mid-twelfth century. The only other significant east coast port was Inverness, which provided a subsidiary funnel for the trade of the far north, much as Roxburgh acted as an internal funnel linking Berwick with the western Lowlands, Dumfries and Galloway. 10 25 , 20 Economic regions until the Wars of Independence kms 50 " 30 miles 75 100 , i 50 60 ML, ASt 238

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