Annales Universitatis Apulensis. Series Historica, 16/II (2012): 173-182 TRANSYLVANIA AND ITS INTERNATIONAL TRADE, 1525-1575 MÁRIA PAKUCS-WILLCOCKS  This article covers several decades of intense political and military turmoil for Transylvania. Part of the medieval kingdom of Hungary until 1541, Transylvania came under Ottoman suzerainty thereafter, albeit in its loosest and most generous form. 1 Naturally, scholarship has debated the effects of this political situation on trade, and the extent of the change that such a dramatic shift in the political map of all Central Europe wrought on regional and international commerce. Certain primary sources, especially customs registers from various Transylvanian towns, allow an assessment of the scale of trade between 1525 and 1575, although the present study shall focus on synthesising available data about trade during this period, rather than establishing patterns of decline. This article shall not discuss the regional trade whereby Transylvania exported its own manufactured products, local cloth and tools, to Wallachia and Moldavia, and the two Romanian principalities in return sent into Transylvania mostly natural products: (salted) fish, honey, wax and cattle. 2 Further, Transylvania was an important provider of salt for Hungary, with Ottoman merchants taking over the salt trade from the Hungarians. 3 In 1552, the imperial commissioners Georg Werner and Paul Bornemisza were ordered to draft a report for Emperor Ferdinand I about the revenues and incomes of Transylvania, which at this point was briefly under the Habsburg crown (1551-1556). They counted poll tax, mines and the three border customs stations at Brașov, Sibiu and Bistriţa among the safe and reliable  PhD, “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History, Bucharest, Romania. 1 Gerald Volkmer, Das Fürstentum Siebenbürgen. Aussenpolitik und völkerrechtliche Stellung, (Brașov: Aldus, 2002), 24-28. 2 Regional trade between the Romanian principalities and southern Transylvania is discussed in Radu Manolescu, Comerţul Țării Românești și Moldovei cu Brașovul, secolele XIV-XVI [The trade of Wallachia and Moldavia with Brașov, in the 14 th -16 th centuries], (Bucharest: Editura Știinţifică, 1965), 104-143 (henceforth abbreviated Manolescu, Comerţul) and Idem, “Relaţiile economice ale Țării Românești cu Sibiul la începutul secolului al XVI-lea” [The economic relations of Wallachia with Sibiu at the beginning of the sixteenth century], Analele Universităţii C.I. Parhon București 7 (1956): 207-259. 3 István Draskóczy, “Erdély sótermelése a 16. század közepén” [Transylvania’s salt production in the mid-sixteenth century], in Judit Pál and Enikő Rüsz-Fogarasi (Eds.), Studii de istorie modernă a Transilvaniei. Omagiu profesorului Magyari András Emlékkönyv. Tanulmányok Erdély újkori történelmeről [Studies of modern history of Transylvania. Festschrift in honor of Professor András Magyari], (Cluj: 2002): 187-200.