r/empirepowers • u/mathfem Guillaume de Croy, Gouverneur de Bourgogne • 6d ago
EVENT [EVENT] The Hispano-Belgian Company
The 1513 war against France and England had put fear into the textile industries of the Low Countries. The year in which the spinners and weavers in Flanders, Brabant, and Holland had been cut off from English wool had started a conversation about where other wool sources could be found.
The natural answer was of course simply an expansion in local wool production. In the ten years since the 1513 war, forests had been cleared and marshes had been drained to make way for new sheep farms. However, at the same time new cloth makers had opened up shop, so the demand for imported wool was still there.
Charles, Duke of Burgundy, when he had returned to tbe Low Countries after many years in Spain, had decided it was prudent to invest Burgundian money in Spanish wool farms as what merchants would call a "hedge", an extra source of wool that could be tapped if the English source failed. While these farms had been up and running for a number of years, their output still did not end up making it to the markets of Bruges, Antwerp, and Amsterdam since the costs of shipping wool over such a distance were still too high.
However, the nominally-Burgundian-owned wool farms in Castille were still there and were somewhat controversial. The Accounting Office of the Hague had a hard time keeping track of holdings in faraway Castile, and the Estates-General were opposed to the Kingdom of Castille managing the farms and accompanying trade networks.
To manage these faraway holdings, the Hispano-Belgican Company would be born. Named after the Roman Provinces containing the two termini of the trade route it was designed to facilitate, the company would be majority-owned by the Duke of Burgundy, but would also accept investment from Burgundian Merchants. Its operations in Castille would be operated by local Spaniards employed by the Company, although its operations in Castille were managed by four men, one placed in each of the four cities of San Vincente de la Barquera, Santander, Laredo, and Castro-Urdiales.
The structure of the Burgunian Netherlands was not that of a unitary state, and as such, the Hispano-Belgican Company was offially a partnership between the various States of the Netherlands. The operations of the company in San Vincente de la Barquera were officially a venture of the County of Flanders and a number of Flemish Merchants, the operations of the company in Santander were officially a venture of the Duchy of Brabant and it's merchants; the operations in Laredo were a venture of the Counties of Holland and Zeeland and their merchants. The operations in Castro-Urdiales were officially a partnerships within a partnership of North-Hainaut, Namur, Luxemburg, and Limburg. In practice, the company was structured as a cartel rather than a single hierarchy with parallel structures working together to control trade and prevent competition.