Configurations of European Fairs. Merchants, Objects, Routes (1350-1600)

2008年的金融危机有助于重振经济和金融史的研究，尽管危机的性质相对较短，但也恢复了对长期市场的研究。最近，对支配现代国际商业的结构的攻击使人们对制度研究产生了怀疑，并对全球化市场的未来提出了疑问。 正是在这种质疑和怀疑的背景下，CoMOR项目从“市场整合”的角度探讨了欧洲博览会的历史。在中世纪末期，集市形成了一个系统，依靠一个紧密组织的时间表（“集市日历”），允许商人在特定的日期在特定的地方见面，提前知道。与此同时，这些交易会促进了地方和区域市场（农村和城市）与跨区域商业网络之间的相互联系。在16世纪，由于金融产品向纯货币市场的转变，商品和金融市场之间出现了脱钩。本项目的时间界限是这样选择的，以便最好地解释这些重大转变：从1320年左右香槟旧集市系统的衰落，经过里昂集市占主导地位的周期，到1630年左右贝桑松集市的衰落。 CoMOR项目特别重视研究这些商人聚会的关系方面（及其变化），参与者的角色和行为。这些交易所将首次通过一个综合数据库和地理信息系统在空间和时间维度上进行映射，通过他们的交易会，项目，行程和节奏追踪商人。该项目的基本数字轴将由法国数字人文团队和德国空间人文团队带来。调查集中在法国，德国和意大利，核心联盟研究人员的专业，与，我们希望和期望，扩展到其他经济和文化地区的项目接近尾声。 负责CoMOR的法德团队为该项目带来了许多具体的优势。最重要的是，在不同的时代互补的专业化：法国中世纪和早期现代德国。其次是对项目主要地形的共同关注，从德国南部到里昂，两个团队的成员中也包括北方意大利的专家。最后，虽然每个团队都有一定的学术倾向--在法国，他们非常重视社会史和经济社会学，在德国，他们有商业史的传统，即金融和交换的历史--但他们都有一个共同的抱负，那就是为欧洲经济史做出贡献，这一抱负植根于对集市在长期内对经济和社会模式的整合效应的研究。

The financial crisis of 2008 contributed to re-invigorating research in economic and financial history and revive, despite the relatively brief nature of the crisis, studies of markets over long periods. More recently, attacks against structures which have governed modern international commerce have thrown institutional studies into doubt and provoked questions about the very future of globalized markets. It is within this context of questions and doubts that the CoMOR project takes up the history of European fairs from the perspective of “market integrations”. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, fairs formed a system resting on a tightly organized schedule (“calendar of fairs”) which permitted merchants to meet in specific places on specific dates, known well in advance. At the same time, these fairs facilitated the interconnection between local and regional markets (rural as much as urban) and the trans-regional commercial networks. During the sixteenth century, a decoupling occurred between merchandise and financial fairs linked to the shift from financing products to pure money markets. The chronological boundaries of the project have as such been chosen in order to best account for these major transformations: from the decline of the old fair systems at Champagne, around 1320, through a cycle dominated by the fairs at Lyon, to the decline of the fairs at Besançon around 1630. The CoMOR project is particularly attached to studying the relational aspects (and their changes) of these merchant gatherings, the roles and the behaviours of the participants. These exchanges will be mapped for the first time in their spatial and temporal dimensions through an integrated database and GIS tracing the merchants through their fairs, items, itineraries, and rhythms. This fundamental digital axis of the project will be brought to life by the French team with respect to Digital Humanities and the German team for Spatial Humanities. The investigation centers on France, Germany, and Italy, the specialties of the core consortium researchers, with, we hope and expect, expansions towards other economic and cultural regions near the end of the project. The Franco-German team in charge of CoMOR brings a number of specific ad-vantages to the project. Most importantly, a complementary specialization in different eras: French medievalists and early modernist Germans. This is followed by the shared closed focus on the project's main terrain, Southern Germany to Lyon, with both teams also counting among their members specialists in Northern Italy. Finally, while each team brings with it certain academic dispositions – in France, the strong emphasis on social history and sociology of economy, in Germany, a tradition of Handelsgeschichte, the history of finance and exchange – they share an ambition to contribute to the history of the European economy, rooted in the study of the integrating effects of fairs on economic and social patterns over the longue durée.