ABSTRACT
Long-distance trade always involved transferring assets over space. Maritime ports functioning as linking nodes on the circuits as well as gateways to extensive hinterlands had to offer financial facilities to fuel activities in transport, commerce and exchange. To capture the best opportunities for profitable exchanges, merchants were eager to get the latest news about supply and demand in the markets, as well as about conditions in general which might have an impact on their transactions. Seaports served as information hotspots in the late medieval and early modern periods, linking European commercial networks to one another. This chapter first discusses the context of the gathering of information, then deals with the various institutional forms of banks, and finally with the instruments of credit and exchange, most of which were typically developed in major maritime ports.
