The political economy of the Anglo-Gascon wine trade c.1348-c.1453

Abstract

The trade in wine between Gascony, part of the Plantagenet-held duchy of Aquitaine (1152–1453),
and the kingdom of England, emerged and evolved with a political union between the two. This
thesis examines the political economy of this relationship from the Black Death (1348–9) to the
end of Plantagenet rule, in order to increase our understanding of how politics interacted with the
late medieval economy to influence the distribution of wealth and power within society, and vice
versa.
To this end this thesis asks first what English crown policies were towards the trade.
Secondly it questions what the effects of these policies might have been, particularly for those
political elites with vested interests in the trade in England and Gascony. Finally this thesis asks
how the wine trade impacted the political relationship between England and Gascony, particularly
with regards questions of loyalty to the crown.
This study finds that the development of the wine market’s structure over the final century
of Plantagenet rule was almost entirely dictated by the reactive requirements of contemporary
politics. The crown decided the terms of merchant participation in the trade, granted commercial
privileges, imposed price, exchange or export controls; and manipulated currency. Such
intervention primarily resulted from pressure applied by the various interested parties: English
merchants and ship-owners; as well as that of an ever-narrowing group of lords, ecclesiastics and
burgesses, based in and around Bordeaux. New quantitative evidence, principally from Bordeaux’s
customs books and constables’ accounts, indicates that commercial and economic benefit largely
followed the pattern of political influence. In so doing English policy generated both greed and
grievance, and these fed partisan conflict and rebellion in the duchy. Thus, the wine trade is
demonstrated to be a key facet of the relationship between Gascony and England, and vital to our
understanding its history.

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ORCID for Anne Curry: orcid.org/0000-0002-7677-5561

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