Conference in Helsinki, 26-28 September, 2017

Historiography of Commercial Law: Past, Present, and Future

Helsinki, 26-28 September, 2017

 

Venue: University of Helsinki, Porthania (Yliopistonkatu 3)

 

Programme

 

First Day (Tuesday, Sept 26): The Past (Porthania, P724 )

13.00 Opening

13.15 – 18.00 Presentations on the historiography of commercial law

13.15-14.30

Stefania Gialdroni (Rome): Benvenuto Stracca

Anja Amend-Traut (Würzburg): Johann Marquard (1610-1668) and his Contribution to the Commercial law’s development

14.30-14.45: Coffee & sandwiches

14.45-16.00

Estelle Rothweiler (Strasbourg): Believer in Strong Capitalism and Free Trade in the Eighteenth Century

Norman Poser (New York): Lord Mansfield’s influence on the commercial law of England and other common-law countries

16.15-17.30

Dave De ruysscher (Tilburg): Reception of French Commercial Law Literature in the Low Countries

Heikki Pihlajamäki (Helsinki): Scandinavian Commercial Law Scholarship in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

18.30 – 19.30 Keynote (public lecture) Porthania, Suomen Laki -lecture hall

Sheilagh Ogilvie (Cambridge): Public-Order versus Private-Order Institutions in Commercial Contract Enforcement

 

Second Day (Wednesday, Sept 27): The Present and the Future

9.00 – 12.00 Debate: Historians and Positive-Law Scholars on the History and Present of Commercial Law (Porthania, room P722)

Histories of commercial law: What is needed? What is the use? What is the relationship between history and positive law in matters commercial?

Discussants: Ellen Eftestøl-Wilhelmsson (Helsinki), Jukka Mähönen (Oslo), Vincenzo Zeno-Zenkovich (Rome). 20 minute presentations and panel discussion.

12.00 – 13.00 Keynote: Albrecht Cordes (Frankfurt): The Codification of Sea Law in Northern and Western Europe in the 13th Century

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch (Restaurant Sunn, Aleksanterinkatu 26)

14.00 – 17.00 Doctoral school (Porthania, room P724)

 

19.00 Dinner (Restaurant Kolme Kruunua, Liisankatu 5

 

Third Day (Thursday, Sept 28):

Departures

10.00 Optional city tour

Announcement: Conference in Helsinki, 26-28 September 2017

 

UPDATE (24 February): Call for Papers for the Doctoral school session

Historiography of Commercial Law: Past, Present, and Future

Helsinki, 26-28 September, 2017

 

The fifth conference of the project aims to examine the historiography of commercial law in a broad perspective. First, there will be presentations by invited scholars from various European countries discussing the historiography in their respective regions (The Past). The second conference day will begin with a debate with invited historians and positive-law scholars discussing, e. g., the relationship between history and positive law in commercial matters (The Present). The final part of the conference is dedicated to a doctoral school for Ph.D. students introducing their current research (The Future).

Six Ph.D. students will be selected through this open call to participate in the doctoral school session. The presentations (15 min) will first be commented by a senior researcher (10 min) followed by a discussion (10 min) Papers may cover the history of commercial law from the medieval to the modern period. Presentations should be in English. For the six selected students, hotel accommodation in single rooms for two nights in Helsinki and travel costs up to 500 euros per person will be paid. More students may be selected to participate at their own cost and conference fee of 50 euros.

To offer a paper, please send the title of the paper, a short abstract (200-400 words), and a short CV to the project coordinator Jussi Sallila (jussi.sallila[at]helsinki.fi) by 31 March, 2017. Accepted papers will be announced by 15 April, 2017.

Preliminary programme

First Day (Tuesday, Sept 26): The Past

13.00 Opening

13.15 – 18.00 Presentations on the historiography of commercial law

Stefania Gialdroni (Rome): Benvenuto Stracca

Anja Amend-Traut (Würzburg): Johann Marquard (1610-1668) and his Contribution to the Commercial law’s development

Estelle Rothweiler (Strasbourg): Believer in Strong Capitalism and Free Trade in the Eighteenth Century

Norman Poser (New York): Lord Mansfield’s influence on the commercial law of England and other common-law countries

Dave De ruysscher (Tilburg): Reception of French Commercial Law Literature in the Low Countries

Heikki Pihlajamäki (Helsinki): Scandinavian Commercial Law Scholarship in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

18.30 – 19.30 Keynote (public lecture): Sheilagh Ogilvie (Cambridge): Public-Order versus Private-Order Institutions in Commercial Contract Enforcement

19.30 Drinks  and finger food

 

Second Day (Wednesday, Sept 27): The Present and the Future

9.00 – 12.00 Debate: Historians and Positive-Law Scholars on the History and Present of Commercial Law

Histories of commercial law: What is needed? What is the use? What is the relationship between history and positive law in matters commercial?

Discussants: Ellen Eftestøl-Wilhelmsson (Helsinki), Jukka Mähönen (Oslo), Vincenzo Zeno-Zencovich (Rome). 20 minute presentations and panel discussion.

12.00 – 13.00 Keynote: Albrecht Cordes (Frankfurt): The Codification of Sea Law in Northern and Western Europe in the 13th Century

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 18.00 Doctoral school

Six (6) Ph.D. students selected by steering group on basis of an open call. Each student gives a short presentation (15 min) and is then commented first by one of the senior researchers (10 min), followed by discussion (10 min). Ph.D. papers will be circulated well in advance to save time for discussion.

 19.00 Dinner

Third Day (Thursday, Sept 28)

9.00 – 12.00 Excursion

Departures

Conference in Frankfurt, 19-21 September 2016

 

 

Migrating Words, Migrating Merchants: Migrating Law

4th workshop on “The Making of Commercial Law”

19-21 September 2016, Frankfurt a.M.

Fondaco

Flyer

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi in the commercial center of Venice, by the eastern foot of the Rialto Bridge, represents the scope of this workshop – in all three regards suggested in the title.
The Italian word fondaco is a loanword from the Arabic فندق, ”funduq“, which in its turn roots in the Greek πανδοκεῖον, “pandokeion”. These three languages generally share an important vocabulary in regard to economy and trade, and the two younger ones, Arabic and Italian, apparently found both the word and the concept behind it useful enough to import it. The concept, although with important variations, always turns around the issue of housing, feeding, lodging, and controlling foreigners, as well as dealing with them in every sense of the word. Olivia Remie Constable examined both word and fact in her book “Housing the stranger in the Mediterranean World ” (2004) and was able to lay out the 2000-year long journey of the various ways how trade-faring cities and nations hosted and controlled strangers and namely foreign merchants. This is one spectacular example of a wide-spread phenomenon within the realm of commercial law. Let it suffice to list just a few more examples of “migrating words”, choosing three words of the language of the country in which the Commercial Revolution took off: Avaria, Accomandita, Bancarotta, and three words from today’s German (!) legal language: Leasing, Factoring, Franchising – words whose American origin is not necessarily obvious to German law students who use them every day.
The Fondaco dei Tedeschi also represents the “migrating merchants” in our title. Trading techniques are closely intertwined with the question how the merchant was travelling in order to learn the trade, accompany his goods, meet business associates, buy and sell, receive accounts, or even move and change the center of his commercial activity to a new city. It is a likely assumption that the migrating merchant carried his commercial and legal tools with him just like a stonemason would have carried his working tools with him on his way from one construction site to the next. But there, at the end of his journey from Nurnberg to Venice of from Dortmund to Bruges, the merchant encountered new ideas and techniques, and he must have compared his set of tools with those of his foreign partners. The early modern literature on commerce and commercial law (Stracca, Malynes, Marquard, Savary) has one main purpose: Inform the merchant about all matters relevant to his success on his journey and at the destination of his trading route.
The idea behind this workshop is to approach the “migration of laws” by following the migration of words and people in order to verify if, and to what extent, principles, rules and practices, especially in the mercantile world, moved by means of men in flesh and blood more than by means of books. If the interaction between the locals and the strangers, and more precisely the mutual learning process in regard to the daily commercial and legal routine can be considered the necessary premises for the spread of commercial practices, the diffusion of certain technical words provide a witness of the circulation of ideas and rules. The analysis of these two different and at the same time strictly connected kinds of “migrations” can provide a fresh point of view on the problem of the diffusion of commercial practices at a transnational level, with focus on the Mediterranean and Northern European seas.
Osmosis, hybridization, assimilation – a number of widely discussed key words spring to the mind. The two trading route examples were chosen with intention: In 1508, the City council of Nurnberg adopted the Venetian tutelage laws – a fact important enough to the lenders to boast with it by painting the scene in oil and hanging the painting into the Palazzo dei Dogi; and the Hanseatic merchant Hildebrand Veckinchusen who spent childhood years in Dortmund organized his book keeping by copying the model he encountered in Italian and Flemish firms after moving to Bruges around the year 1400. It won’t be hard to come up with additional examples but we will try to take the next step and ask: Why? The merchants adopting something foreign and new must have deemed it favorable, but based on what reflections? What did they find weak and disadvantageous about the usual, traditional ways they were brought up with? Were there regrets? After the failure of the Venetian Company Hildebrand’s brother Sivert Veckinchusen complained in a letter that they should better have stuck to the “old nourishment”, referring to the traditional trade along the axis Bruges-Lübeck-Novgorod. If we listen carefully, we can still hear Sivert sigh.

Programme (updated 5 September 2016)

 

Monday 19 September 2016

Arrival in Frankfurt
16:00-17:00 Ship cruise
17:00-18:30 “Legal-historical” guided tour Frankfurt a.M.
18:30 Light dinner in Sachsenhausen

 

Tuesday 20 September 2016
Location: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M., Gästehaus Frauenlobstraβe

9:00 Introduction: Stefania Gialdroni (Rome and Helsinki)
9:15 – 10:45
Catherine Squires (Moscow), German-Russian contacts in legal texts of the 13th-15th cent.
Stefania Gialdroni, “Propter conversationem diversarum gentium”: Merchants’ travels and commercial law practices in late medieval Pisa

10:45-11:15 Coffee

11:15-12:45
Mark Häberlein (Bamberg), Coming to terms with the Atlantic world: German merchants and English legal culture in the early modern period
Ron Harris (Tel Aviv), Three Institutions, Three Paths of Migration: Sea Loan, Funduq/caravanserai and Commenda

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30

Guido Cifoletti (Udine), Lingua Franca and migrations
David von Mayenburg (Frankfurt a.M.), Wörter für Wucher: Canon law and the 16th c. debate on the legitimacy of south German trading houses

15:30-18:00 Break

18:00 KEYNOTE SPEECH
Location: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M., Campus Westend
Mark Cohen (Princeton), Maimonides on Commercial Agency Law: Migrating Words and Migrating Custom among the Geniza Merchants
19:30 Dinner

 

Wednesday 21 September 2016
Location: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a. M., Gästehaus Frauenlobstraβe

9:00 – 10:30
Uwe Israel (Dresden), Strangers from the north. Transalpine migrants into late medieval Italy
Bart Lambert (Durham), A legal world market: The exchange of commercial law in fifteenth-century Bruges

10:30-11:00 coffee

11:00-12:30
Maria Fusaro (Exeter), Seamen’s employment and States’ jurisdiction, the view from the Early Modern Mediterranean

Albrecht Cordes (Frankfurt a.M.), Latin – Low German – High German – Latin: One full circle of law languages in Northern Germany

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00
Cornelia Aust (Mainz), From mamran to wisselbrief: Ashkenazi Merchants in Central European Commerce
Hanna Sonkajärvi (Rio de Janeiro) Laws – Customs – Conventions: French Merchants before Brazilian Law Courts in the Nineteenth Century

15:00-16:00 Closing discussion
Anja Amend-Traut (University of Wuerzburg), Mark Godfrey (University of Glasgow)

Announcement: Conference in Fiskars, 7-8 January 2016

Influence of Colonies on Commercial Legal Practice

Fiskars (Finland), 7-8 January, 2016

The aim of this workshop is to bring together recent findings on the influences overseas trading (with a particular focus on Early Modern and Modern Times) and in particular colonial settlements (whether crown or charter colonies) have had on commercial law and legal practices in a broad sense. Over the past years, scholars have been studying “colonial law and justice”, emphasizing on the transplant and adaptation of legal rules and courts to the colonies, also as concerns commercial law and practices. It appears that colonial experiences not only led to the development of a particular so-called “colonial law” but also influenced commercial practices of the major colonial Empires, as well in their relations with their overseas colonies as on an international level. In view of this, many ideas about the influence of colonial experiences on the making of commercial law should be reconsidered. This round-table conference will therefore bring together topics that can be addressed within this “colonial” framework as maritime commercial law, risk and insurance, commercial contracts, company law, State and Private enterprises, conflicts of law and conflict resolution.

The workshop is the third in a series on the history of commercial law, organized during the 2014-2017 period in Helsinki, Brussels and Frankfurt. The conferences will be organized in the framework of the project “The making of commercial law: common practices and national legal rules from the early modern period to the modern period.

 

FINAL PROGRAMME

Wednesday 6 January 2016
Arrival in Helsinki (Original Sokos Hotel Helsinki Kluuvikatu 8)
18h.30 : Welcome drink (meeting in the hotel lobby at 18h.20)
20h.00 : Dinner (not covered by the organisers)

 
Thursday 7 January 2016
7h.45 : Transfer from Helsinki to Fiskars

9h.30 : Arrival at Fiskars

 

10h.00-10h.20 : Coffee

 
10h.20 : Short Introduction

 
10h.30-12h.00 : First session
David MIRHADY (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver), The Rhetoric of Commercial Law in 4th-century BC Athens.
Paul J. DU PLESSIS (University of Edinburgh), Trading along the wall – what the Vindolanda tablets reveal about Roman commerce.

 
12h.00-14h.30 : Lunch and free time in Fiskars

 
14h.30-15h.45 : Second session
Luisa BRUNORI (CNRS – Lille University), The first treaty on colonial commercial law: Tomàs de Mercado’s « Summa de tratos y contratos »1569.
Alain CLEMENT (Tours University), English mercantilist thought and the matter of colonies from the 17th century to the first half of the 18th century.

 

15h.45-16h.00 : Coffee break

 

16h.00-17h.15 : Third session
Oscar CRUZ BARNEY (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Trade and Law in New Spain in the XVI and XVII centuries.
Matthew MIROW (Florida International University), Scots traders and Spanish law in East Florida.

 

17h.15-17h.30 : Break

 

17h.30-18h.45 : Fourth session
David GILLES (University of Sherbrooke), How to “Mashup” Lex Mercatoria From Civil Law to Common Law: Genesis of Lex Mercatoria in Lower-Canada History 1760-1866.
Philipp LIPTON (Monash University Melbourne), The Transplant and Adaption of Company Law in Colonial Victoria, 1850-1900.

 

19h.00-20h.00 : Finnish Sauna.

 

20h.30 : Dinner.

 

Friday 8 January 2016
9h.00-10h.15 : Fifth session
Alexander CLAVER (Leyde University), From challenge to opportunity. Chinese Commerce under Dutch Law in the Netherlands Indies.
Petra MAHY (University of London), The Comparative evolution of Company Law in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines: colonial Polices and their Legacies.

 

10h.15-10h.45 : Coffee Break

 

10h.45-12h.00 : Sixth session
Luigi NUZZO (Salento University, Lecce), Lease Agreements. Banks and Commercial Practices in a colonial City: Tianjin 1860-1920.
Umakanth VAROTTIL (University Singapore), Corporate Law in colonial India : Rise and Demise of the Managing Agency System.

 

12h.00-14h.00 : Lunch and free time in Fiskars

 

14h-15h15 : Seventh session
Jakob ZOLLMANN (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung), “Neither the State nor the Individual goes to the Colony in order to make a bad Business”. State and Private Enterprise in the Making of Commercial Law in the German Colonies, ca. 1884 to 1914.
Bas DE ROO (Ghent University), Negotiating colonial tariff policies. Customs and commerce in the Congo (1885-1914).

 

15h15-15h45 : Coffee break

 

15h45-17h00 : Eight session
Sandra GERARD-LOISEAU (CNRS – Lille University), How to understand commercial norms under “colonial” protectorate : the Tunisian example (1881-1952).
Nathalie TOUSIGNANT (Saint-Louis University Brussels), Commercial law and colonial legal journals. The case of Belgian Congo (1908-1962).

 

17h.00-17h.20: Final conclusions by Bernard DURAND (Montpellier University)

18h.00 Transfer to Helsinki

20h.00 Closing dinner

 

Announcement: Conference in Brussels, 21-22 May 2015

 

The Small, Medium-Sized and Large Company in Law and Economic Practice (Middle Ages-Nineteenth Century)

SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre (www.square-brussels.com/, Glass Entrance,
rue Mont des Arts,
B-1000 Brussels), Brussels, 21-22 May 2015

The goal of this workshop is to bring together scholars who have worked on business ventures, and to address law and economic practice from the Middle Ages until c. 1900. We particularly invite for papers that assess differences with regard to the size of partnerships and companies. Over the past years, more attention has been paid to limited and general partnerships and to organizational laws containing models for small enterprises (e.g. the sprl and GmbH). It seems that both in legal and economic practice, and for all periods mentioned, smaller companies mattered more than was previously thought, and even in periods in which corporations existed. In view of this, many ideas about larger companies can be reconsidered. Topics that can be addressed with regard to small, medium-sized and/or large companies are a.o. legal personhood, limited liability, corporate finance, and corporate governance.

The workshop is the second in a series on the history of commercial law, organized during the 2014-2017 period in Helsinki, Brussels and Frankfurt. The conferences will be organized in the framework of the project “The making of commercial law: common practices and national legal rules from the early modern period to the modern period”.

 
PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME

 

Thursday 21 May 2015

9h coffee

9h30-10h50 first session

Ulla Kypta (University of Basel), Associates or Agents? Trading Enterprises in Northern and Southern Germany in the Late Middle Ages
Bart Lambert (Durham University) Making Size Matter Less: Italian Merchant Guilds as Tools for Capital Redistribution in Late Medieval Bruges

10h50-11h05 coffee

11h05-12h35 second session

Anja Amend-Traut (Würzburg University), Structure of Early Enterprises – from Commenda-like Arrangements to Chartered Joint-Stock Companies (Early Modern Period)
Luisa Brunori (Paris Sud), The Secunda Scholastica and the Commercial Company: Persons and Capital in the 16th and 17th Centuries

12h35-14h lunch

14h-15h20 third session

Bram Vanhofstraeten (Maastricht University), Small-scale and Medium-sized Industrial Enterprises in Seventeenth-Century Liège
Julie Hardwick (University of Texas), ‘She Failed to Make a Book’: Account Books, Small Enterprises and Emerging Practices of Record Keeping in Early Modern Lyon

15h20-15h35 break

15h35-17h fourth session

Stefania Gialdroni (Roma Trè, Arcadia University), Incorporation and Limited Liability in the English EIC: an Uneasy Relationship
Jelten Baguet (Vrije Universiteit Brussels), Corporate Governance in a Small-Scale Pre-Modern Maritime Enterprise: The Case of the Ostend Company (1722-1731)

Friday 22 May 2015

9h coffee

9h30-10h50 fifth session

Carlos Petit (Huelva University), From Commercial Guild to Commercial Law. Spanish Company Regulations, 1737-1848.
Annamaria Monti (Bocconi University), Italian Late 19th-Century Companies: Size and Corporate Governance

10h50-11h05 coffee

11h05-12h25 sixth session

Ron Harris (Tel Aviv University), Private companies in 19th century England
Dag Michelsen (Oslo University), The Development of Norwegian Company Law 1875-1910

12h30-14h lunch

14h-15h20 seventh session

Joeri Vananroye (KU Leuven), Partnerships in 19th-20th c. French and Belgian doctrine
Dave De ruysscher (Vrije Universiteit Brussels), Small Companies, Contractual Leeway and Third-Party Protection (Belgium, c. 1830-c. 1850)

15h20-15h45 break

15h45-17h10 eight session

Edouard Richard (Université de Rennes), The Banque d’Union générale: Legal Aspects of its Shut-Down (1878-1885)

Matthijs de Jongh (Court of Appeal, Amsterdam), Fuzzy Borders: Dutch Partnership and Company law in the Second Half of the 18th Century

 

The organizational committee

 Dave De ruysscher (Vrije Universiteit Brussels-FWO Flanders), Heikki Pihlajamäki (University of Helsinki), Albrecht Cordes (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), Serge Dauchy (Université Lille 2)

Practical info

Entrance is free, but registration is required. The final date is 15 April 2015. Please send an email to dderuyss@vub.ac.be. Papers will be sent to participants.

Historiography and Sources of Commercial Law – Conference in Helsinki, September 1-3, 2014

 

Programme

Venue: University of Helsinki, Faculty of Law, Porthania (Yliopistonkatu 3) lecture room P545

Monday, 1 September 2014

Session 1: Sources and Commercial Law, 9.30-12.00,

Eberhard Isenmann: Legal, moral-theological and genuinely economic opinions on questions of trade and economy in 15th and early 16th century Germany

Dave De ruysscher: Merchant manuals as sources

Heikki Pihlajamäki: Constructing a field of law: sources of commercial law in Scandinavia

Lunch break, 12.00-13.30

Session 2: Commercial Legal Conflict Resolution in the Baltic Sea Region and Universal Commercial Law, 13.30-15.00

Justina Wubs-Mrozewicz: Mercantile conflict resolution in practice: connecting diplomatic and legal sources from Danzig c. 1460-1580

Albrecht Cordes: Levin Goldschmidt and the concept of universal commercial law

Coffee Break, 15.00-15.30

Session 3: Superior Courts as Fora for Commercial Legal Conflicts 1, 15.30-17.45

Alain Wijffels: Records and sources of commercial litigation before the Great Council of Mechelen (15th-16th centuries)

Peter Oestmann: Court records as sources for the history of commercial law: The Oberappellationsgericht Lübeck as commercial court

Mia Korpiola: Svea Court of Appeal records as a source of commercial law

 

Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Session 4: Superior Courts as Fora for Commercial Legal Conflicts 2, 9.00-10.30

Anja Amend-Traut: The high imperial courts (the Aulic Council and the Imperial Chamber Court) and commerce

Boudewijn Sirks: The High Council of Holland and Zealand (to be confirmed)

Coffee Break, 10.30-11.00

Session 5: Comparing English and Continental Commercial Law, 11.00-12.30

Guido Rossi: Comparing the sources of English and continental commercial law – with the example of maritime insurance law

Margrit Schulte Beerbühl: Bankruptcies, speculation bubbles and the law: bankruptcy law vs. bankruptcy management in late eighteenth-century Hamburg and London

Lunch break, 12.30-14.00

Session 6: Custom and Codification in French and Italian Commercial Law, 14.00-16.15

Richard Court:  Genoese merchants and the consuetudine

Edouard Richard: Rise of usages in French commercial law and jurisprudence (17th-19th centuries)

Olivier Descamps: On origins of the French Commercial Code: vicissitudes of the Gorneau Draft

 


 

Wednesday, 3 September 2014

Steering group meeting