Drăgan, Ioan (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 2001-2002 (5-6. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
Societate
54 Şarolta Solcan Woman Merchants of Cluj in the First Half of the 17"' Century (Abstract) The paper starts from the records of the Custom Office of Cluj in Transylvania (1599-1637) and analyzes the activity of women merchants from Cluj. The research tracked the factors that influenced trade and the habits of women merchants, who participated in the commercial exchanges with towns around Cluj. They also traded, to a lesser degree, with neighbour states of Transylvania. The average number per year of women merchants who passed through the custom office was 30. The absolute number in a year varied between I and 72 (see Table 1). Almost half of the total number of women participated in the trade for only one year. But among the others there were women merchants who were active for decades. The average number of years for the commercial activity of women was 3.1 (see Table 2-3). The part of women activities was 12.5 percent of the total commercial exchanges recorded by the custom office. Unfortunately, the sum paid by women was only 2 percent of the payments to the custom office. This as well as the list of the products they brought on the market showed that theirs was a small commerce. They traded food, trimmings, soap, cheap textiles. Their products were inexpensive and for daily use. Women took these products to fares around Cluj or in Hungary. They rarely traveled to Poland, Vienna or the Ottoman Empire. The businesswomen were mainly involved in export. Thus, while 127 women took 456 times merchandise outside Cluj, only 41 came with wares and this happened only 87 times. In most of the cases the value of exported goods was higher than the value of imported goods (see Table 12), despite the impression at a first look that imported goods had a higher value. The woman merchant was a familiar figure in fares. Their activity was however diminished by wars and the household-related business during feasts or the periods of intensive work in the fields. Therefore, during normal times, 71 percent of their trading took place in six months (February, March, May, August, November). There are few data concerning the habits of these women. We may observe however that they were from all the age cohorts. They traveled with a group of wagons with at least one tradesman among them. Usually, this was a trustworthy man who had a lot of experience. Some traveled during many years together with women merchants. The length of time for commercial travels was between 17 and 40 days. This depended of course on distance and the period of the year. In February they traveled for 10-11 days. The development of Transylvania during the investigated period created conditions for a noticeable involvement of women in commerce. However, despite an increase, women share in the total commercial activities diminished from 15 percent (1610-1613) to 12 percent (1630-1636), according to Table 6.
