Suchergebnisse

This article uses club theory to explain why two major medieval commercial centres declined in the early modern period. Lübeck and Danzig illuminate the difficulties experienced by old‐style European towns where early modern guilds (and other privileged 'corporations') had a lot of political influence in making the transition to the new style of north‐west European cities such as Amsterdam and Hamburg. The article refutes theories proposing that the special privileges awarded to a merchant elite enhanced economic growth; instead, it is argued that those privileges gave rise to 'club goods' that were beneficial only to a small number of merchants and were provided at the expense of society at large, resulting in economic decline.

The rise of Hamburg as a global marketplace and financial centre in the seventeenth century was a significant sign of the bourgeoning integration of European markets. In the early seventeenth century, the urban staple function in northwest Europe was largely concentrated in Amsterdam, while in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries London and Hamburg rose to preeminence. Hamburg served as a hub for international trade, connecting markets in England, Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic, and the Mediterranean. Goods such as raisins, sugar, tobacco, salt, iron, and leather changed hands, with the transactions reflecting the widespread mercantile network in which Hamburg took part. Furthermore, the commercial development of Hamburg and the rise of the Prussian state were important steps in creating a well-ordered and integrated urban network in Germany long before political unification.

A theory about the acquisition and use of cognitive maps of largescale everyday environments is presented. The basic assumptions of the theory are (1) people's behavior in social and physical environments is determined by action plans, and, if the execution of such action plans requires traveling, plans for how to travel, termed travel plans, are formed and executed; (2) the cognitive maps of large-scale and medium-scale environments acquired are adapted to facilitate movement and travel, and contain information about destinations for travel, spatial information, and travel instructions; (3) cognitive maps are initially acquired in connection with the formation of travel plans and, at the later stages of acquisition, the execution of travel plans (requiring active monitoring) constitutes a more important set of conditions for acquisition. The principles of internal representation of the cognitive map are also discussed.