Abstract

"What kind of manner and policy of correspondence this is, I leave it to you to consider": Origins and Resolution of Conflicts Among Merchants in the Early Modern Low Countries"

Marte Stoffers, Radboud University Nijmegen (marte.stoffers@ru.nl)

The omnipresence of the principal–agent problem in early modern credit-based exchange has led both historians and economists to investigate the importance of agency relationships in early modern trade, particularly the working of trust among merchants who perhaps never even met in person (Trivellato, 2009). Existing scholarship has shed light on merchants’ strategies for dealing with risk and uncertainty, from the use of trusted agents in cross-cultural networks to the emergence of formal institutions associated with economic development. However, despite this rich body of research, the understanding of the informal norms and customs that governed merchants’ behaviour remains limited. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how merchants used information, sanctions, and the language of trust and trustworthiness to manage conflicts. While expectations among economic actors often remain implicit, they can be uncovered through the investigation of commercial conflicts. Through a close reading of the business correspondence of two Dutch-speaking merchants in the seventeenth century, the potential for using information, sanctions, and the language of trust and trustworthiness as a lens for studying merchant relationships is explored.