Economic historians of the later Middle Ages have stressed the impact of honour and trust as basic mechanisms of producing predictability between merchants. Simultaneously, merchants needed stable political preconditions, as provided for by the mutual privileges their authorities agreed upon. On this political level as well as in everyday life, the threat and – if needed – use of force were eminent options. Hence, violence was not socially disruptive, but functional, as long as a relative equality of military means and the overwhelming consensus of economic exchange enclosed it. Within repetitive communication framed by these factors, norms emerged, which were used to produce and reproduce predictability. However, these norms always remained subject to continual re-negotiation.

All this the actors did not do in order to overcome legal pluralism, but in order to improve their own position and/or the position of their respective group in heterogenous legal spaces. These spaces thus remained pluralistic, because any harmonization necessarily failed, due to the diverging interests of the actors involved. The workshop aims at discussing these questions referring to late medieval Northern and Central Europe as an example.

Organisation: PD Dr. Gregor Rohmann (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)

Registration: https://wwuindico.uni-muenster.de/event/1506/.
More Information: https://www.uni-muenster.de/EViR/veranstaltungen/tagungenundworkshops/predictability.html.

Wednesday, 5 October 2022

14.00–14.30h
Peter Oestmann (Münster): Welcome
Gregor Rohmann (Frankfurt): Introduction

Session 1: Merchants and Markets in Central Europe
Chair: Leslie Carr-Riegel (Budapest/Münster)

14.30–15.15h
Katalin Szende (Budapest): Trust and Distrust in the Legal Framework of Urban Life in Late Medieval Hungary

15.15–16.00h
Olga Kozubska (Lviv/Münster): Trading Privileges and Legal Pluralism in Ukrainian Towns

16.00–16.30h Coffee break

Session 2: Scandinavia and the North
Chair: Vera Teske (Münster)

16.30–17.15h
Tobias Boestad (La Rochelle): German Law or Law of the Germans? Some Notes about the Early Hanse Merchants and their Attitude towards Legal „Harmonization“ in Northern Europe

17.15–18.00h
Louis Sicking (Amsterdam/Leiden): A Microcosm of the Hanse? Legal Pluralism at Scania, 1350–1550

18.00–18.45h
Edda Frankot (Bodø): Administering Justice to Foreigners: International Merchants and Mariners before the Late Medieval Aberdeen Courts

19.30h Dinner

Thursday, 06 October 2022

Session 3: Hanse Towns and Hanse Merchants
Chair: Sophia Mösch (Münster)

09.00–09.45h
Ulla Kypta (Hamburg): Bridging Social Capital: Predictability as the Basis of Cooperation between Late Medieval Merchants

09.45–10.30h
Philipp Höhn (Halle): Legal Commonalities in Legal Pluralism. Communicating Conflict and Cohesion in Hanse Towns

10.30–11.00h Coffee break

11.00–11.45h
Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz (Amsterdam): The Trouble with Legal Pluralism: a Danzig Case

Session 4: The Hanse in the West
Chair: Quentin Verreycken (Louvain)

11.45–12.30h
Bart Lambert/Juuriaan Wink (Brussels): Legal Pluralism and the Hanseatic Zuiderzee Towns: Conflict Management in a Multilayered Legal Landscape between North and Baltic Seas

12.30–14.00h Lunch break

14.00–14.45h
Indravati Félicité (La Réunion): Considerations of Legal Unity and Pluralism in Early Modern Hanse Diplomacy

14.45–15.00h
Peter Oestmann (Münster): Commentary

15.00–15.30h Final discussion

Source: How to Ensure Predictability in Legal Pluralism. Northern Europe in the Later Middle Ages. In: H-Soz-Kult, 28.08.2022, <www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-129323>.