Ultrapassar fronteiras comerciais: a carta de Anton Welser a Conrad Peutinger sobre a exportação de prata para Portugal (1504)

Abstract

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, as a consequence of the opening of the Cape Route to India, the Portuguese-German trade reaches increased considerably. Attracted by spices and other oriental riches, several powerful trading houses from Augsburg and Nuremberg settled in Lisbon. The German merchant-bankers had special relevance to the Crown of Portugal because they occupied a dominant role in Europe as suppliers of silver and copper, two metals that were irreplaceable for trade in the Indian Ocean. However, there were initially customs barriers, namely in the Netherlands, which made it difficult to export German silver to Portugal, as the letter by Anton Welser shows.