Currency Exchanges 1383-1411 (Mueller)

Contains monetary data supporting material presented in Reinhold C. Mueller, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1500 (Baltimore, 1997).

Exchange rates reacted to demand for specie as well as to demand for credit; and demand was largely foreseeable, according to the rhythm of the activity of the port, as the authors of merchant manuals noted and as is reflected in the commercial correspondence. A detailed year-by-year chronicle of the money market, based on the practically weekly observations of the cambisti operating in Venice, would be useful to underscore those aspects that deviated from the usual seasonal fluctuations [for examples see Chapter 8 of Mueller's book]. At the same time, such a chronicle would be repetitive and tedious. Deviations from the norm, that is, unusual peaks and troughs, can be identified on the graphs [available at this web-site].

The source of the data is the correspondence preserved in the archive of Francesco di Marco Datini. Out of a total of about 150,000 letters extant, some 7,000 were written in Venice by various agents and addressed to branches and agencies in the whole Datini network. The earliest series is that directed to Pisa: some 900 letters, 1383-1402 (buste 548-550); the most important series consists of letters directed to Florence (some 2,100), which begin in 1386, become rare in 1405, and stop altogether in 1407 (buste 709-715); the correspondence with Barcelona (some 1,400) letters begins in 1395 and continues until February 1411, that is, even after Francesco di Marco Datini's death in 1410 (buste 926-929). In gathering data, I perused the first two series completely and the third, which provides particularly complete listings of exchange rates in Venice, only beginning in July 1405. About 400 letters written by Venetians are extant, most of them to Majorca, Barcelona, and Valencia; especially concerned with purchases of raw wool (any study of the wool industry in Venice might well begin here, in identifying interested parties), these letters are surprisingly uninformative on matters of foreign exchange and even of commodity prices. In fact, Venetians preferred working through Florentine commission agents represented in Venice rather than having to deal directly with agents abroad. (A new, complete inventory of the letters is being undertaken under the direction of Bruno Dini and Elena Cecchi.)

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