Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence.

It has been rarely remarked how seldom a competitive spirit comes into play in the relations among these [Renaissance Florentine] merchants. The vast correspondence of Datini and of the Medici themselves (the largest collections of business letters to survive before the sixteenth century) yields hardly a hint of competition…. However individualistic the Florentine world appears in contrast with the tight corporate structures elsewhere—the Venetian senate, the Hanseatic league, the south-German cartels, the London regulated companies—it was still permeated with something of the spirit of medieval corporatism. This is what the fiducia Florentine business historians make so much of really comes down to—that sense of trust in one another that in a way also kept everyone in line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]