... at a major disadvantage. Natural accidents such as the migration of herring shoals to the North Sea compounded this. North Germany depended on large-scale herring fishing, and this thriving industry was almost destroyed when, for whatever natural cause, the summer herring shoals vanished in 1473. Once so powerful, the Baltic economy was in decline, its strength undermined further by the rise Atlantic economy based on Antwerp and Seville. Germany was also experiencing a relative decline in population compared with countries such as France. Germany was beginning to lose its pre-eminence given its central position as the Mediterranean declined and the rise of the Atlantic economy began to cities such as Lisbon, Seville and Antwerp, due to this new economic avenue of trade the movement of goods along the German rivers in declined sharply after 1500. One major exception to this was trades in metals. Silver was mined in the Hartz ...

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