Flotsam and Jetsam in the Historiography of Maritime Trade and Conflicts

Abstract

Medieval and early-modern long-distance trade was fraught with risks. Maritime long-distance trade entailed specific risks. Adverse human and natural factors could easily result in a commercial venture’s partial or total loss. Such risks, especially when they materialized, often created conflicts of interests, which, in turn, could affect how the partially or entirely failed venture could be dealt with, but also how the various actors involved in the conflict of interest would deal with each other in future business ventures. Not surprisingly, historians have shown great interest in the various ways those actors have tried to manage and solve the ensuing disputes. Through the study of conflict management and resolution, much information can also be gained on the business practices themselves, and the different social groups who played, directly or indirectly, a part in their preparation, in carrying them out, and eventually in dealing with the anticipated or unanticipated effects of such enterprises. These social actors were manifold: apart from the merchants themselves, they include (and could at times be the same as the merchants) sailors, investors, holders of public offices, privateers, pirates... Long-distance trade quickly developed the role of agents, already ubiquitous in ancient sources. Agents both facilitated and complicated long-distance commercial operations and relations. They often reflected, but also bridged, the cross-cultural hurdles which had to be overcome. Those cross-cultural hurdles were even enhanced when they implied different religions and political cultures. In the case of disputes, they also entailed different mechanisms for handling conflictual situations. Conflict management and resolution operated characteristically in a context of multi-governance and pluri-jurisdictional polities with concurrent social networks and institutions, as illustrated for eleventhand twelfth-century Cairo in J. Goldberg’s key-note address. Jewish merchants were able to bring their interests and cases before either Jewish or Islamic jurisdictions, though the rationale for preferring one or the other option could depend on the circumstances and the effects they sought.