Migrating Words, Migrating Merchants, Migrating Law examines the connections that existed between merchants’ journeys, the languages they used and the development of commercial law in the context of late medieval and early modern trade. The book, edited by Stefania Gialdroni, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy, Dave De ruysscher and Heikki Pihlajamäki, takes advantage of the expertise of leading scholars in different fields of study, in particular historians, legal historians and linguists. Thanks to this transdisciplinary approach, the book offers a fresh point of view on the history of commercial law in different cultural and geographical contexts, including medieval Cairo, Pisa, Novgorod, Lübeck, early modern England, Venice, Bruges, nineteenth century Brazil and many other trading centers.
Contributors are Cornelia Aust, Guido Cifoletti, Mark R. Cohen, Albrecht Cordes, Maria Fusaro, Stefania Gialdroni, Mark Häberlein, Uwe Israel, Bart Lambert, David von Mayenburg, Hanna Sonkajärvi, and Catherine Squires.
Stefania Gialdroni, Ph.D. (2009), is Assistant Professor of Medieval and Modern Legal History at the RomaTre University. Her main research topic is the history of commercial law. In 2011 she published the book East India Company. Una storia giuridica (1600-1708) (Il Mulino).
Albrecht Cordes is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Legal History and Civil Law at the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. His research is especially focused on the history of commercial law, Hanseatic legal history and the history of conflict resolution.
Serge Dauchy is Research Director at the CNRS (Lille-France) and Professor of Legal History at the University Saint-Louis of Brussels. His main research topics are the history of civil procedure, comparative history of central courts and the history of Québec.
Dave De ruysscher, Ph.D. (2009), is Associate Professor at Tilburg University and at Vrije Universiteit Brussels. As a legal historian and lawyer, he specialized in the history of commercial and private law of the early modern period and the nineteenth century.
Heikki Pihlajamäki is Professor of Comparative Legal History at the University of Helsinki. He has published extensively on the legal history of Scandinavia, Europe and America, including Conquest and the Law in Swedish Livonia (ca. 1630-1710): A Case of Legal Pluralism in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2017).
Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Introduction Albrecht Cordes and Stefania Gialdroni
Part 1: Mediterranean Networks
1 Migrating Words and Migrating Custom among the Geniza Merchants: Maimonides on Commercial Agency Law Mark R. Cohen
2 Propter ConversationemDiversarum Gentium: Migrating Words and Merchants in Medieval Pisa Stefania Gialdroni
3 ʻMigrating Seamen, Migrating Laws’? An Historiographical Genealogy of Seamen’s Employment and States’ Jurisdiction in the Early Modern Mediterranean Maria Fusaro
4 Lingua Franca and Migrations Guido Cifoletti
Part 2: European Networks
5 Brokers as German-Italian Cultural Mediators in Renaissance Venice Uwe Israel
6 German-East Slavic (Language) Contacts in Legal Texts of the Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries Catherine Squires
7 The Language of the Law: The Lübeck Law Codes (ca. 1224–1642) Albrecht Cordes
8 A Legal World Market? The Exchange of Commercial Law in Fifteenth-Century Bruges Bart Lambert
9 Wörter für Wucher: Ius commune and the 16th Century Debate on the Legitimacy of South German Trading Houses David von Mayenburg
10 Transfer of Credit, Mercantile Mobility, and Language among Jewish Merchants in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Central and East Central Europe Cornelia Aust
Part 3: Atlantic Networks
11 Coming to Terms with the Atlantic World: German Merchants, Language, and English Legal Culture in the Early Modern Period Mark Häberlein
12 Laws – Customs – Conventions: French Merchants and French Legal Doctrines in the Brazilian Law Courts in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century Hanna Sonkajärvi Index
Scholars interested in commercial law history, economic history, history of linguistics, translation and, more generally, in the lives and travels of merchants and the impact they had on the development of law.