International Trade in Northern Europe, about 1200 to 1700, Institutions and Regulations
This course will focus on the institutions and regulation of trade and shipping in late medieval and early
modern northern Europe
The existence of universal maritime and mercantile laws in medieval northern Europe has often been
presumed. Because trade and shipping connected people from towns and regions far and wide, it would
only make sense to have common rules regulating these contacts. Or would it? In the past decades the
idea of universal laws has increasingly been questioned. This course will focus on the institutions and
regulation of trade and shipping in late medieval and early modern northern Europe in order to examine
why shared maritime and mercantile rules did not (and could not have) come into existence and how the
idea of universal laws came about. It will trace the development of maritime and mercantile laws from oral
customs around 1200 to national legislation in the seventeenth century, investigate the rise and fall of the
Hanseatic League as an international trading organisation and provide insight into the functioning of other
relevant institutions, such as guilds, markets and fairs, and courts.
Knowledge
- Students should have acquired knowledge of the development of the regulation of international trade and shipping in northern Europe from about 1200 to 1700.
- Students should have acquired knowledge of the rise and fall of the Hanseatic League and the functioning of guilds, markets and fairs, and courts between c. 1200 and 1700.
Skills
- Students should be able to understand and reproduce different viewpoints of professional historians concerning the development of supra-national regulations and institutions.
- Students should be able to understand how online crowdsourcing functions and how it might affect the reliability of sources.
- Students should be able to write for different audiences.
General competence
- Students should be able to find and access relevant research material, both online and in print.
- Students should be able to form and express their own opinions utilizing primary and secondary sources, both independently and collaboratively.
Lectures and seminars.
During the semester, the students will jointly work on articles for wikipedia on a relevant historical theme.