page_title: Golden Age of Flanders
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Golden Age of Flanders / Economy
caption_attribution_description: Franzosenmord in Antwerpen; Kupferstich, 1576 (?)
context_page_description: The Golden Age of Flanders, or Flemish Golden Age, is a term that has been used to describe the flourishing of cultural and economic actitivies of the Low Countries around the 16th century. The term Flanders in the 1500s referred to the entire Habsburg Netherlands within the Burgundian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire and inclusive of modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Its political capital was Brussels, while the financial-economic centre was Antwerp. Other major artistic and cultural centres of the period included Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen and Leuven. It is also grouped with the Dutch Golden Age, a more common term used primarily in reference to the Dutch Republic in the 1600s, within a "Flemish and Dutch golden age" covering the period from the late 15th to the 17th century.
context_section_description: The size of Charles' empire made the port city of Antwerp "the centre of the entire international economy" Antwerp was the richest city in Europe at this time. Antwerp's golden age is tightly linked to the fact that it became the financial centre where Spanish precious metals coming from the Americas were exchanged for banking credit of rich German families (namely the Fugger and the Welser). During the first half of the 16th century Antwerp grew to become the second-largest European city north of the Alps. Many foreign merchants were resident in the city. Francesco Guicciardini, the Florentine envoy, stated that hundreds of ships would pass in a day, and 2,000 carts entered the city each week.
  By 1504, the Portuguese had established Antwerp as one of their main shipping bases, bringing in spices from Asia and trading them for textiles and metal goods. The city's trade expanded to include cloth from England, Italy and Germany, wines from Germany, France and Spain, salt from France, and wheat from the Baltic. The city's skilled workers processed soap, fish, sugar, and especially cloth. Banks helped finance the trade, the merchants, and the manufacturers. The city was a cosmopolitan center; its bourse opened in 1531, "To the merchants of all nations." 
  The city of Antwerp was a leader in the pepper market, the market of precious metals coming from Mexico and Peru, and the textile industry. At the beginning of the 16th century Antwerp accounted for 40% of world trade. The boom-and-bust cycles and inflationary cost-of-living squeezed less-skilled workers. In the century after 1541, the city's economy and population declined dramatically. The Portuguese merchants left in 1549, and there was much less trade in English cloth. Numerous financial bankruptcies  began around 1557, until Amsterdam eventually replaced Antwerp as the major trading center for the region.
  Aside from commerce, the Flanders were historically also an important manufacturing region. The beginning of the century the old cloth industries of Flanders had been seriously threatened by English competition; However,  Charles V implemented reforms to put the industries of the Netherlands under protection. The cloth industry was strengthened by the introduction of factory methods, and the linen industry was fully developed. Such economic policy was successful. He created new and efficient agencies that fostered the social and industrial life of the people. Agriculture was also promoted together with commercial legislation.
caption: Sack of Antwerp in 1576, in which about 7,000 people died.
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