18世紀のレヴァント貿易とラングドック毛織物工業 : アレッポ向け毛織物輸出の変動をめぐって

概要

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Woolen fabrics were by far the most important goods exported from Europe to the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In accordance with the change of the Mediterranean trade hegemony, Venetian, Dutch, English and French products took by turns a predominant place in the Levant market. Supplanting rapidly the English Levant Company, the French Levant trade reached its peak during the eighteenth century. The structure of production and commerce of French cloth was special : the production was concentrated in the province of Languedoc and the export was monopolized by the merchants of Marseilles who sent the products exclusively to the Echelles of Levant, where their agents were established. From the supply of raw materials to the sale of finished goods, all the business was controlled under the financial power of the merchants of Marseilles. The problem of the conjuncture is the most interesting. Except for the wartime which interrupted the commercial navigation in the Mediterranean, the evolution of the export of French cloth can be divided into four phases : take-off (1720's-1735), stagnation (1736-1756), apogee (1763-1777), decline (after 1778). In the first phase, the export trade increases spectacularly in quantity, so that French cloth drives English goods away in the Levant market. However, an excessive increase in export provokes an oversupply, which brings about a commercial crisis at Marseilles in 1729-1730. Thus the first boom is followed by a long stagnation during twenty years, aggravated by the influence of the Turco-Persian War and the deteriorating political situation in Persia. After the Seven Years' War, the French Levant trade expands again and reaches the peak. The merchants of Marseilles send more than 90,000 pieces of cloth a year. But as a matter of fact this is a dangerous expansion of commerce: hereafter, the oversupply becomes chronic, causing a vicious circle between the fall of the price and the worsening of the quality. Under an appearance of prosperity, a latent crisis of the Levant trade is going on. Weakening and political disorder of the Ottoman Empire, outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, frequent famines and epidemics which destroy the population, general economic decline of the Middle East explain the growing difficulty of commerce. The fourth phase, during which the cloth export diminishes manifestly, is therefore the explosion of this crisis. Then the merchants of Marseilles stop supporting financially the manufacturers of Languedoc, and begin to speculate in export of Spanish and Austrian moneys. Meanwhile, the Jewish merchants of Leghorn take the place of the French merchants to export the products of Languedoc to the Levant. At the end of the eighteenth century, the secular structure of the trade is being destroyed and new, somewhat unhealthy speculations are developing.
政治経済学・経済史学会の論文
1989-10-20

著者

深沢克己
九州大学

18世紀のレヴァント貿易とラングドック毛織物工業 : アレッポ向け毛織物輸出の変動をめぐって

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