Why Did Whole Towns Appear for Two Weeks a Year? Trade on a Schedule

A fair differed from a market in scale, frequency and reach. A market was weekly, served a locality and traded everyday goods. A fair was annual or a few times a year, ran for days or weeks, drew merchants from other countries and traded in bulk, in luxury goods and in money itself. It operated under a charter granting the right to hold it, frequently with a monopoly against competing fairs nearby, and it suspended some ordinary legal arrangements in favour of special rules for its duration. Participants travelled considerable distances under safe conduct, which the granting authority guaranteed, and the whole thing assembled and dispersed on fixed dates known across Europe.

Several arrangements addressed the specific problems of long-distance trade:

• •A fixed date and place, so merchants could plan a circuit and expect to find counterparties
• •Safe conduct, protecting travellers and goods on the way as well as at the fair
• •Special courts sitting during the fair, resolving disputes within days rather than terms
• •Recognition of merchant custom rather than local law, which merchants from anywhere understood
• •Facilities for changing money and for settling debts by offsetting rather than shipping coin
• •Exemptions or reductions in the tolls that otherwise made moving goods expensive

The judicial arrangement is the most distinctive feature and solved a genuine problem. A merchant from one country trading with another had no practical remedy in the ordinary courts, which were slow, applied local rules and were unavailable to somebody who had to leave. Fair courts sat throughout the fair, were staffed by merchants, applied commercial custom, and resolved disputes within hours or days, with the pressure to do so coming from everybody needing to leave when the fair closed. Their jurisdiction covered anything arising at the fair. The English name for these courts derives from a French phrase describing dusty feet, referring to travelling traders. The body of custom they applied developed into a substantial part of modern commercial law.

A handful of fairs dominated European trade for long periods and their histories show the pattern. The fairs of Champagne, running in a cycle of six across four towns through the year, connected Italian merchants carrying eastern goods with Flemish merchants carrying cloth, and functioned from the twelfth century as the principal exchange of northern Europe, with the counts of Champagne guaranteeing safe conduct and taking revenue. They declined as sea routes opened between Italy and Flanders and as political conditions changed. English fairs including one held on a field outside Cambridge drew merchants from across the continent and survived in reduced form for centuries. Fairs in Leipzig, Lyon and elsewhere became settlement occasions for international finance long after the goods ceased to matter.

Fairs faded as the problems they solved were solved better elsewhere. Permanent commercial centres with resident merchant communities removed the need to assemble periodically, since a buyer could find a seller at any time. Improvements in credit, in bills of exchange and eventually in banking meant settlement no longer required everybody in one place. Roads, and later railways, made travel cheap enough that concentration lost its advantage. State legal systems developed commercial jurisdiction and recognised merchant custom, removing the need for special courts. Several great fairs became financial settlement occasions after they stopped mattering for goods, and then became festivals, hiring occasions or amusements, which is what most surviving fairs now are.

A fair was annual, ran for weeks, drew merchants internationally and operated under a charter with special rules and guaranteed safe conduct. Courts sitting during the fair applied merchant custom and resolved disputes in days, because everybody had to leave when it closed. Permanent commercial centres, credit instruments and cheaper travel removed the need for assembling periodically.