Understanding the economy through its circuits: European currency and money from the Americas in the mid17^th century

Starting from the observation that, from a merchant’s point of view, all commercial activity describes a circular movement beginning with an investment and ending, after a more or less long lapse of time, with the cashing in of all or part of the initial stake with or without a profit, this study aims to present the implications of approaching the working of the Early Modern economy through merchant circuits. The documentary basis is merchant accounting, where transactions are recorded by the thousands. These transactions can be organized first into chains, and then into circuits. The presentation begins with an analysis of an accounting entry in the ledger of Louis Collage, a messenger between Ghent and Antwerp, which records a payment involving a tax collector in Ghent, a cashier active on the Antwerp stock exchange, and Giovanni Stefano Spinola, a banker in Antwerp. The analysis then introduces Spinola’s interests in the king of Spain’s finances, based on two bills of exchange whose journey through Europe it follows. Finally, the investigation picks up the thread of the original entry and shows that the value it records is part of the movement of funds linked both to the financing of the war and to the production and trade of linen cloth. Tracking this value within an accounting system and between different accounting systems enables us to trace the transformation of its medium (merchandise, bill of exchange, cash) as it travels between Cadiz, Genoa and Venice, as well as between Ghent, Antwerp and London. The circuits thus reconstructed concern several sectors (manufacturing, commercial, fiscal, financial), actors (producer, messenger, cashier, merchant-banker, financier) and scales (local, regional, international). By showing how the various circuits are interwoven, the approach sketches out a global, integrated vision of economic activity, and lays the foundations for a research program.