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Introduction: Commercial quarrels – and how (not) to handle them

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2017

ALAIN WIJFFELS
ALAIN WIJFFELS*
Affiliation:
Universities of Leiden, Leuven, Louvain-la-Neuve; CNRS (France); European Chair Collège de France 2016–2017.
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Abstract

The settlement of structural commercial conflicts of interest cannot be exclusively subsumed under the heading of dispute resolution. Even when a particular conflict opposing specific individuals or groups of interests could be settled, the broader underlying conflicts of interest would subsist and re-emerge. Both commercial and institutional or political actors would therefore rely on various techniques of conflict management, a process imposing restraint on the opposing parties while allowing sufficient leeway for business to be continued. Both conflict resolution and conflict management were devices of public and corporate governance, and therefore, following the late medieval tradition, instruments more or less based on established patterns of legal or quasi-legal models legitimised by accepted or conventional parameters of ‘justice’.

Introduction: les querelles commerciales – et comment les gérer (ou pas)

Les conflits d'intérêts commerciaux de type structurel ne peuvent pas être exclusivement traités dans le simple cadre du règlement des différends. Même lorsqu'un conflit spécifique opposant des individus ou des groupes d'intérêts a pu être réglé, le conflit d'intérêts sous-jacent va subsister et resurgir. Les acteurs commerciaux et institutionnels ou politiques ont donc recours à diverses techniques de gestion des conflits, un processus qui impose une certaine retenue aux parties, tout en laissant une marge de manœuvre suffisante à la poursuite des affaires commerciales. La résolution et la gestion des conflits sont des moyens de gouvernance aussi bien pour les affaires publiques que pour les entreprises et, par conséquent, selon la tradition médiévale tardive, ce sont des instruments fondés plus ou moins sur des schémas établis de modèles judiciaires ou quasi-judiciaires, légitimés par des paramètres largement acceptés ou conventionnels de ‘justice’.

Einführung: handelsdispute – und wie man sie (nicht) führen soll

Die Beilegung struktureller kommerzieller Interessenkonflikte lässt sich nicht ausschließlich unter der Überschrift der Schlichtung subsumieren. Selbst wenn ein besonderer Konflikt, der sich gegen spezifische Einzelpersonen oder Interessengruppen richtete, beigelegt werden konnte, so blieb der diesem zugrunde liegende Interessen-konflikte bestehen und konnte wieder aufbrechen. Sowohl kommerzielle als auch institutionelle und politische Akteure verließen sich daher auf verschiedene Techniken des Konfliktmanagements, wobei sie einerseits Druck auf die Gegenparteien ausübten und andererseits genügend Spielraum ließen, um die Geschäfte weiterzuführen. Sowohl Konfliktlösung als auch Konfliktmanagement waren Methoden der öffentlichen und korporativen Steuerung und daher, spätmittelalterlicher Tradition folgend, Instrumente, die mehr oder weniger auf etablierten Mustern rechtlicher oder quasi-rechtlicher Modelle be-ruhten, die durch allgemein akzeptierte oder konventionelle Parameter der ‚Gerechtigkeit’ legitimiert waren.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 32 , Special Issue 1: Merchants and Commercial Conflicts in Europe, 1250–1600 , May 2017 , pp. 1 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

ENDNOTES

1 For these three axes, see Greif, A., Institutions and the path to the modern economy: lessons from medieval trade (New York, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ogilvie, S., Institutions and European trade: merchant guilds 1000–1800 (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelderblom, O., Cities of commerce: the institutional foundations of international trade in the Low Countries, 1250–1650 (Princeton, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelderblom, O. and Grafe, R., ‘The rise and fall of the merchant guilds: re-thinking the comparative study of commercial institutions in premodern Europe’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40, 4 (2010), 477–511 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Benson, B. L., ‘Justice without government: the merchant courts of medieval Europe and their modern counterparts’, in Beito, D. T., Gordon, P. and Tabarrok, A. eds., The voluntary city: choice, community, and civil society (Ann Arbor, 2002), 127–50Google Scholar; Bonoldi, A., ‘Mercanti a processo: la risoluzione delle controversie tra operatori alle fiere di Bolzano (secc. XVII–XVIII)’, in Bonoldi, A., Leonardi, A. and Occhi, K. O. eds., Interessi e regole: operatori e istituzioni nel commercio transalpino in età moderna (secoli XVI–XIX) (Bologna, 2012), 29–58 Google Scholar; Heirbaut, D., ‘Rules for solving conflicts of laws in the middle ages: part of the solution, part of the problem’, in Musson, A. ed., Boundaries of the law: geography, gender, and jurisdiction in medieval and early modern Europe (Aldershot, 2005)Google Scholar; W. Decock, Theologians and contract law: the moral transformation of the Ius commune (ca. 1500–1650) (Leiden, 2013); Charles Angelucci and Simone Meraglia, Trade, self-governance, and the provision of law and order, with an application to medieval English chartered towns, Toulouse School of Economics Working Paper (2013). In the context of the present preface, any attempt to outline the growing bibliography on the subject is inevitably a desultory exercise. I may brevitatis gratia refer to two major research projects with which I have been directly acquainted over the past ten years: first, the series of conferences (with published proceedings) organised by the Centre d'Histoire Judiciaire in Lille (CNRS/Lille 2 University) on dispute resolution in different areas: the last volume in the series dealt specifically with commercial conflicts: Cordes, A. and Dauchy, S. eds., Eine Grenze in Bewegung: Öffentliche und private Justiz im Handels- und Seerecht/ une frontière mouvante: justice privée et justice publique en matières commerciales et maritimes [Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 81] (Munich, 2013)Google Scholar. Secondly, the Frankfurt project Aussergerichtliche und gerichtliche Konfliktlösung, which is documented on the website, http://www.konfliktloesung.eu/de.

3 See, for example, A. Cordes, ‘The search for a medieval lex mercatoria’, in V. Piergiovanni ed., From lex mercatoria to commercial law (Berlin, 2005), 53–68; De ruysscher, D., ‘Law merchant in the mould: the transfer and transformation of commercial practices into Antwerp customary law (16th–17th centuries)’, in Duss, V., Linder, N., Kastl, K., Börner, C., Hirt, F. and Züsli, F. eds., Rechtstransfer in der Geschichte –  legal transfer in history (Munich, 2006), 433–45Google Scholar.

4 New Diplomatic History is starting to incorporate such perspectives; see Ebben, M. and Sicking, L., ‘New Diplomatic History in the premodern age: an introduction’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 127, 4 (2014), 541–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Watkins, J., ‘Toward a new diplomatic history of medieval and early modern Europe’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38, 1 (2008), 1–14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Blockmans, W., ‘Voracious states and obstructing cities: an aspect of state formation in preindustrial Europe’, in Tilly, C. and Blockmans, W. eds., Cities and the rise of states in Europe, AD 1000 to 1800 (Boulder, CO, 1994)Google Scholar; Acemoglu, D. S., Johnson, S. and Robinson, J., ‘The rise of Europe: Atlantic trade, institutional change, and economic growth’, American Economic Review 95, 3 (2005), 546–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ertman, T., Birth of the Leviathan: building states and regimes in medieval and early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelderblom, Cities of commerce; Stabel, P., ‘Economic development, urbanisation and political organisation in the late medieval southern Low Countries’, in Bernholz, P., Streit, M. E. and Vaubel, R. eds., Political competition, innovation and growth: a historical analysis (Berlin, 1998), 183–204 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The term ‘test case’ may sound anachronistic, but is warranted by arguments whereby a litigant (or his counsel) warns that other similar cases are waiting in the wings, dependent on the outcome of the case at hand. I have occasionally come across such arguments in various jurisdictions. For example, in the late medieval practice of the Great Council of Mechlin (with regard to the levying of the Zeeland toll on the Honte, the alternative estuary of the Scheldt between Brabant and the sea): Wijffels, A., ‘Flanders and the Scheldt question: a mirror of the law of international relations and its actors’, Sartoniana 15 (2002), 213–80Google Scholar; A. Wijffels, ‘Toll-free navigation on the Honte ca. 1466–1468: a legal consultation by J. Boods, Pensionary of Antwerp’, Bulletin [Commission Royale pour la publication des anciennes lois et ordonnances de Belgique] L (2009) [2012], 175–201. For an example in the early modern practice of the High Court of Admiralty in London (on the issue of the participation by English mariners in Dutch privateering ventures against Spanish and Portuguese shipping, after the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty of 1604): Wijffels, A., Alberico Gentili and Thomas Crompton: an encounter between an academic jurist and a forensic practitioner [Studia Forensia Historica, I] (Leiden, 1992)Google Scholar.