Social and Economic Responses to Sixteenth-Century Trade in North Atlantic Islands

Summary

During the sixteenth century Iceland, the Faroes, Shetland and the Gaelic areas of Ireland were drawn into the networks of trade emanating from England and Germany. In each case preserved fish caught in the North Atlantic were exchanged for consumer goods. The response in each of these islands to this emerging trade was different, though we can also identify many common factors. The comparative study of these provide us with a variety of ways in which the economics, politics and government influenced the formation of systems of exchange. Such systems existed without the use of any coinage and largely without any pre-existing trading infrastructure. This was a comparatively brief episode of negotiated trade and social relations worked out on the ground between the incoming merchants and fishermen.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Expanding the Intellectual Envelope Comparative Approaches to Political Economy   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 432