‘Migrating Seamen, Migrating Laws’? An Historiographical Genealogy of Seamen’s Employment and States’ Jurisdiction in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Abstract

From the last quarter of the sixteenth century English and ‘Netherlandish’ shipping entered into the Mediterranean, and quickly established itself as an important economic player in the maritime trade between the North and South of Europe and, rather crucially, also within intra-Mediterranean trade. This phenomenon, famously named by Fernard Braudel the ‘Northern Invasion’, was for a long time understood in simple ‘national’ terms, assuming that Northern ships were the just expression of the expansion of national economies. However, the documentation emerging from Mediterranean courts of law tells a rather more complex story, characterized by a considerable mix of capital investment and multi-national crews. This situation fostered an important knowledge exchange between crewmen of different nationalities, and its consequence was a considerable increase in wage-related litigation as Northern seamen contested their original agreements. Tracing this type of litigation across various archives highlights important differences about the conditions of employment, and brings to the fore early modern states’ attempts to extend their jurisdictions well beyond their boundaries, especially in controlling the actions of their subjects. This is particularly evident in the Mediterranean, a small and crowded space with an abundance of active and competing jurisdictions, frequently contested, sometimes shared, and in actual practice overlapping and jostling for primacy. The study of the strategies employed by seafarers in choosing between the multiple fora available to them is opening a most privileged window onto the interaction between economic activities and legal developments, and helps to highlight how different legal systems interacted with each other and evolved.