Abstract
Abstract The student of Baltic trade in the sixteenth century has two principal groups of sources at his disposal: the long series of statistics of the customs and other public revenue; and such business material as account-books and charter-parties, originating from the day-to-day activities of individual merchants. 1 Although charter-parties were drawn up by public officials in the Netherlands, they were intended to serve private purposes, not public. The linking of these two types of data has often proved to be a fruitful course of research. The private material provides the necessary starting-point for an analysis of the trustworthiness or otherwise of the statistical sources, while the statistical sources enable the student to visualise the transactions of individuals in their proper perspective. A juxtaposition of this sort is made by Aksel E. Christensen in his Dutch Trade to the Baltic about 1600, where the statistical material comes from the Sound toll registers, and the individual material consists mainly of the private archives of the Dutch merchant family of van Adrichem together with the charter-parties registered in the Dutch notarial registers.2 Christensen's general approach is summed up in sentences such as the following:
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