The Maritime Trade and Society of La Rochelle in the late Middle Ages

In the historiography of medieval France, maritime trade may appear to be a rather old-fashioned topic. In the nineteenth century, the attraction of the sea and its landscapes occupied the collective imagination and it then became a particularly interesting theme for professional historians and learned people. The literature of the period shows all kinds of publications on the topic, from anecdotal stories of small coastal towns to dictionaries and compilations of old maritime law. The best examples are the solid and voluminous works of positivistic inspiration, published in the 1850s and 1860s on the trade and navigation of the cities of Rouen and Bordeaux. ¹ The subject matter may be traditional but it was atypical insofar as it shed a new light the history of communities that until then had only been envisaged from the viewpoint of territory, war, politics and religion.