Chapter 5 Invisibility and Information: Commercial Legal Practices at the Grass-Roots Level in a Nineteenth-Century Finnish Timber Trading Company
In: The Development of Commercial Law in Sweden and Finland (Early Modern Period–Nineteenth Century)Search for other papers by Ulla Ijäs in
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Abstract
This chapter, as a case study, reflects the complex social, cultural and political environment of merchants in nineteenth-century Finland. Furthermore, it illustrates how the common practices of merchant law were understood and adopted, and how these were developed and used in everyday situations at the grass-roots level. Particularly, this chapter focuses on a timber trading company Hackman & Co, which operated at the global markets and whose owners participated the legislative work at the Finnish Diet.
The chapter asks how legal plurality was addressed in an international business environment. How was information about legal plurality transmitted to the European periphery? How was this realized in legislative work in Finland, when the Finnish Diet finally opened in 1863? The chapter writes the legal history from below, that is, by studying a firm and the people involved in the firm and its business, discovering the development of both business and law.
The chapter demonstrates that functioning transnational merchant networks and legal plurality required knowledge and a deep understanding about different legal and juridical institutions. This knowledge helped to support the interests of export merchants when legislation was modernized in Finland. Merchants, in their work in the Diet, appeared to be quite conservative, promoting the status quo instead of radical modernization.