SPECIAL ISSUE: Special Issue Risk Management and Jurisdictional Boundaries in Pre-Modern Europe (ed. Maria FUSARO) (Quaderni Storici LVII (2022), nr. 3)

 

(image source: RW)

Maria Fusaro, Introduction. Risk Management and Jurisdictional Boundaries in Pre-Modern Europe (OPEN ACCESS)
DOI 10.1408/108114

Giovanni Ceccarelli, I teologi e l’avaria generale. Linguaggi del rischio tra XIII e XVIII secolo (OPEN ACCESS)
10.1408/108115

Abstract:

By taking into analysis a wide range of scholastic texts, this essay aims at filling a gap in our understanding of how risk was perceived and theorized in pre-modern Europe. Scholarly investigations have so far underlined how intellectuals, while discussing about marine insurance, were able to explore the economic dimensions of risk, including its measurability and profitability. However, we know very little about what they thought about alternatives to insurance and, by focusing on General Average, this study intends to overcome this shortcoming. An extensive survey of scholastic writings from the 13th to the 18th century, shows that theologians had difficulty at considering General Average as worthy of in-depth discussion. Only at the end of the 16th century scholasticism acknowledges the principles currently used in legal literature, without this prompting anything comparable to the discussions on insurance or gambling. Nonetheless, these sources reveal alternative ways to describe sea risks, where the emphasis is not on calculus or profit but on shared responsibility, collective action, and ex-post mitigation

Dave De ruysscher, Shipping, Commerce and the Risk of Jurisdiction. The Scheldt Trade (Sixteenth Century). (OPEN ACCESS)
DOI 10.1408/108116.

Abstract:

This article investigates the rules of jurisdiction that were applied in the case of damages in maritime transport. The focus is on traffic in one of the main riverine estuaries of the Low Countries, over the rivers Honte and Scheldt. In the course of the fifteenth century the governments of the county of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant had come to embrace a more exclusive notion of jurisdiction on rivers, which comprised the idea of precise demarcations. In practice, however, this new approach did not bring about more clarity. Uncertainty as to which forum would hear disputes on riverine shipping accidents marked a risk of trade. Among merchants and shipmasters, choice of jurisdiction was common, which happened after mishaps and was not arranged for contractually. The mentioned uncertainty was addressed with rules of thumb, which steered towards the courts of some locations instead of others. They took the port of destination as criterion, in combination with the residence of the merchant-owners of cargo on board of the ship.

Maria Fusaro, Venetian «Averages» between East and West. Risk Management and Transaction Costs in the Early Modern Mediterranean (OPEN ACCESS)
DOI 10.1408/108117
Abstract:

Between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, Averages played an important (and neglected) role within Venetian maritime trade and shipping, as they functioned both as risk management tools and as a mechanism for the absorption of transaction costs. The essay will trace these normative developments across the phase of economic growth in the Middle Ages, and analyse how these were structurally transformed in the seventeenth century under the pressure of new maritime operators which contributed to the early modern crisis of the Venetian maritime sector. This touches on several elements of the shifting Venetian economy about which we still know very little: the internal balance of interests between different economic sectors; and within the maritime sector itself – shipowners, merchants, investors; and presents a novel interpretation of the resilience of Venetian maritime working capital well into the eighteenth century.

Jake Dyble,  Lex Mercatoria. Private «Order», and Commercial «Confusion». A View from Seventeenth-Century Livorno (OPEN ACCESS)
DOI 10.1408/108118
Abstract:

This article examines how maritime Averages – legal procedures that were quotidian but multi-centred and potentially complex – were managed in the jurisdictionally crowded Mediterranean. One suggested solution to this difficulty was that procedures were governed by the lex mercatoria, a supposedly universal body of customary merchant law which allowed disputes to be resolved according to a common framework: the debunking of this historical myth demands that legal historians elucidate more clearly how the problem of different maritime customs was resolved in a transnational environment. Evidence from seventeenth-century Livorno suggests that heterogenous maritime Average rules were overcome by mutual recognition of the decisions made in other jurisdictions even when these followed different rules. This was justified with reference to the «disorder» and «confusion» that would otherwise afflict commerce. «Order» here did not mean uniformity and ex-ante certainty of outcomes but rather general expectations that judgements made in other centres would be respected. Attempts by the English and French states to press for consular jurisdiction threatened – mostly unsuccessfully – to disrupt this system. The case buttresses certain lex mercatoria theories only in as far as it demonstrates that early modern state building had the potential to destabilise a functioning international commercial order: yet this order was guaranteed by a legitimating authority that only state-backed institutions could provide.

 Andrea Addobbati, Il romanzo del barattiere. «Prova di mare» e indebolimento della posizione legale del marinaio nel passaggio tra Sette e Ottocento (OPEN ACCESS)
DOI 10.1408/108119
Abstract:

In the second half of the 18th century, the emergence of large insurance companies significantly altered the European market for maritime risks, changing the traditional balance of power between insurers and policyholders. This change had repercussions on the regulatory framework and contractual practices, whose reform began to be perceived as a need that could no longer be postponed. In order to be able to make use of the new calculation- based forecasting tools, it was first necessary to develop and adopt certain legal devices that would reduce information asymmetries and moral hazard, both at the contractual level and at the time of claim settlement. Starting from the close analysis of an emblematic case against a Neapolitan shipowner accused of fraud, the essay clarifies how the evolution of admissible evidence and judicial procedure was shaped by the profound structural transformations of the period.

Read the full special issue (and the book reviews in the journal) here.