Lecture | CMGI Brown Bag Seminar
Maritime and Commercial Jurisdictions in the Dutch Empire (18th-19th Centuries)
- Date
- Tuesday 2 April 2024
- Time
- Serie
- CMGI Brown Bag Seminars 2023-2024
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room (2.60)
This talk provides the general outlines for a VENI proposal, to be submitted (hopefully) in January 2025. The proposed project aims to analyse how legal institutions to adjudicate maritime and commercial disputes in the Dutch Empire were established and developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Even if we have often anecdotal evidence that legal institutions, like the Schepenbank (Aldermen’s Courts) or Weeskamers (Orphan Chambers), in the Dutch Republic and/or Kingdom of The Netherlands were transplanted to the colonies, there has not been a systematic study of this process and the subsequent development of those very institutions. This project fills this gap by analysing the transplantation and development of legal institutions regarding maritime and commercial law in the Dutch Empire, as the development of so-called “open-access institutions” for (maritime) commerce has often been pointed to as one of Europe’s major strides in the medieval and early modern period, in particular with regards to the Dutch Republic and Britain. How these very institutions functioned and developed in the colonial world has however been overlooked by these Eurocentric perspectives, and this project therefore fills an urgent need by studying the transplantation, development and of legal institutions in the Dutch Empire.
This talk is based on a draft proposal for a VENI-grant. Please contact g.p.dreijer@hum.leidenuniv.nl for the written proposal under discussion.