Medieval Champagne Fairs: Lessons for Development

By Sheilagh Ogilvie, Professor of Economic History, University of Cambridge. Original published at VoxEU.

A vocal set of economists argue that economies can succeed in the absence of strong state and public institutions. This column looks to the ‘Champagne fairs’ of medieval Europe for lessons in how important public institutions can be. Public authorities are crucial – for good or for ill. When rulers provided these as generalised institutional services to everyone, the Champagne fairs flourished. When they granted them to privileged groups only, trade declined and business moved elsewhere.

Economic history is widely supposed to support the idea that successful economies do not require public order institutions – those associated with formal authorities such as states, rulers, and legal systems – because private order institutions – those formed through informal collective action by individuals – can substitute for them. This is taken to imply that modern poor economies can achieve sustained growth without well-functioning governments or legal systems, since private-order substitutes have a successful historical record of supporting growth (e.g. World Bank 2002; see also Dasgupta 2000, Helpman 2004, Dixit 2004, 2009). These claims are arresting, but the facts tell a different tale.

Public Order Institutions Matter

History does hold lessons for economic development, and one of them is that public-order institutions are crucial – for good or ill.

The medieval Champagne fairs are regarded as the classic exemplars of beneficent historical institutions that hold important lessons for modern economic development. These trade fairs operated as the undisputed fulcrum of international exchange and financial settlements in Europe from c. 1180 to c. 1300 and were central to the ‘Commercial Revolution’, the huge growth in long-distance trade during the Middle Ages (Bautier 1970, Ogilvie 2011, Edwards and Ogilvie 2012).

The idea that the Champagne fairs succeeded because of private-order institutions has taken two distinct forms:

  • First, Milgrom et al. (1990) argued that international trade grew at the Champagne fairs because of private order courts in which private judges kept records of traders’ behaviour.

By communicating merchants’ reputations, private judges enabled traders to boycott those who had previously defaulted on contracts. Private judges also levied fines for misconduct, it is claimed, which merchants paid because non-payment meant losing all future opportunities to trade at the fairs. Institutional arrangements combining private judges and individual reputations created incentives for all traders to fulfil contractual obligations, even though state enforcement was absent and repeated interactions were rare. From this portrayal of the Champagne fairs, Milgrom et al. concluded that medieval trade expanded through merchants’ developing “their own private code of laws”, employing private judges to apply these laws, and deploying private-order sanctions against offenders – all “without the benefit of state enforcement of contracts” (Milgrom et al. 1990).

In actual fact, however, there were no private judges at the Champagne fairs. On the contrary, the fairs were supported by a rich array of public order institutions (Bautier 1970, Terrasse 2005, Edwards and Ogilvie 2012). One was a dedicated public law court which operated throughout each fair. The fair wardens who decided the cases in this court were princely officials, not private judges. International merchants also used other levels of the princely justice system to enforce their contracts – the high tribunal of the ruler of Champagne, the courts of the ruler’s bailiffs, and the courts of the ruler’s district provosts (Edwards and Ogilvie 2012). The towns where the fairs were held operated their own municipal courts, and local abbeys operated special courts at the fairs – international merchants made use of both (Bourquelot 1839-40, Bourquelot 1865, Bautier 1952). The jurisdiction of these various legal tribunals which guaranteed property rights and contract enforcement at the Champagne fairs emanated not from the merchants, but from the public authorities, since even the municipal and abbey courts operated under devolved jurisdiction granted by the rulers of Champagne. Furthermore, there is no evidence that any of these tribunals applied a private, merchant-generated law code (Edwards and Ogilvie 2012). The Champagne fairs thus provide no support for the idea that private-order institutions can substitute for missing public order institutions in enabling economies to function successfully:

  • A second claim about private order institutions at the Champagne fairs is that of Greif (2002, 2006a, 2006b), who argued that trade at the fairs was sustained by a “community responsibility system”, consisting of collective reprisals between corporative groups of businessmen.

In this portrayal, public law courts did exist in medieval Europe, but could not support long-distance trade because they were controlled by local interests and were biased against foreign merchants. Instead, it is claimed, a private order institution called the community responsibility system provided incentives for local courts to supply impartial justice.

According to this account, all long-distance traders were organised into communities or guilds. If a member of one community defaulted on a contract with a member of another and the defaulter’s local court did not provide compensation, the injured party’s local court would impose collective reprisals on all members of the defaulter’s community. The defaulter’s community could only avoid such sanctions by ceasing to trade with the injured party’s community. If this prospect was too costly, the defaulter’s community had an incentive to provide impartial justice. It is claimed that this combination of corporative justice and collective reprisals provided the institutional basis for long-distance trade in the early centuries of the Commercial Revolution, and that the Champagne fairs were a prime example of this private-order institution in operation. Specifically, the legal system of the Champagne fairs is supposed to have lacked jurisdiction over visiting merchants – the fair authorities “relinquished legal rights over the merchants once they were there. An individual was subject to the laws of his community – represented by a consul – not the laws of the locality in which a fair was held” (Greif 2006b). Enforcement of merchant contracts, according to this view, relied on the exclusion of defaulting debtors and their entire communities from the fairs. This threat of collective reprisals, it is argued, made merchants’ communal courts compel defaulters to fulfil their contracts (Greif 2002).

The Historical Evidence Does not Support These Ideas

The rulers of Champagne did not relinquish jurisdiction over visiting merchants and never permitted them to be subject solely to the laws of their own communities. For the first 65 years during which the fairs were international trading centres (c. 1180–1245), all visiting merchants were subject to the public legal system prevailing at the fairs. In 1245, the count of Champagne issued a charter exempting a subset of visiting foreign merchants from judgement by his officials, but only by bringing them under his direct jurisdiction as ruler. The role of merchant communities at the Champagne fairs was quite minimal (Bautier 1953, Edwards and Ogilvie 2012). No merchants had community consuls at the fairs for the first 60 years of the fairs’ international importance, from c. 1180 to c. 1240. Many important groups of merchants at the fairs never had consuls or communities at all. And even the few groups of merchants that did have community consuls in later phases of the fairs’ existence (after c. 1240) could only use them for internal contract enforcement. To enforce contracts between their members and merchants of different communities, they relied on the public legal system (Edwards and Ogilvie 2012). The Champagne fairs flourished as the most important centre of international trade in Europe for 80 years with no recorded collective reprisals, which were only used, in a limited way, in the final phase of the Champagne fairs’ ascendancy, after c. 1260 (Bourquelot 1865, Bautier 1970, Edwards and Ogilvie 2012). The reprisal system was fully integrated into the public legal system – the right of reprisal required a series of formal legal steps in public law courts, and the enforcement of reprisals relied on state coercion (Ogilvie 2011, Edwards and Ogilvie 2012). The few merchant communities at the Champagne fairs played no observable role in implementing reprisals. The Champagne fairs provide no evidence that private order collective reprisals underpinned long-distance trade in the absence of public order institutions.

The lessons from the Champagne fairs

The Champagne fairs do, however, provide positive lessons for economic development.

  • One major lesson is that the policies and actions undertaken by the public authorities are crucial (Ogilvie 2011, Edwards and Ogilvie 2012).

The courts of Champagne are a vivid example of the importance of well-functioning political authorities in providing the minimal requirements for market-based economic activity to flourish. They guaranteed security, property rights and contract enforcement, they built infrastructure, they regulated weights and measures, they supported foreign merchant lenders against politically powerful debtors, and they ensured equal treatment of foreign merchants and locals (Edwards and Ogilvie 2012).

  • A second major lesson is that economic success is better guaranteed by ‘generalised’ institutions which are accessible to all economic agents, not ‘particularised’ institutions such as communities or guilds which guarantee property rights and contract enforcement only to members of privileged networks (Ogilvie 2011, Ogilvie and Carus 2014).

The distinguishing characteristic of all the institutional services that supported international trade at the Champagne fairs was that the rulers provided them not as privileges granted to specific merchant guilds or communities, but rather as generalised guarantees issued “to all merchants, merchandise, and all manner of persons coming to the fair” (Alengry 1915).

The Champagne fairs declined when the French regime that took over the fairs after 1285 ceased to provide the generalised institutional mechanisms that had attracted and sustained international trade. Security of property rights, contract enforcement, and access to commercial infrastructure were no longer guaranteed as generalised services but rather became particularised ‘privileges’ offered (and denied) to specific merchant communities in order to serve the short-term interests of French royal policy. The public authorities no longer offered a level playing field to all merchants, but granted privileges that favoured particular interest groups and discriminated against others. Merchants moved to cities with more generalized institutions (Edwards and Ogilvie 2012).

Concluding Remarks

The Champagne fairs do hold lessons for economic development. They show that the public authorities were crucial – for good or ill. Private order institutions did not guarantee contract enforcement, property rights, or commercial infrastructure. When rulers provided these as generalised institutional services to everyone, the fairs flourished. When they granted them to privileged groups and denied them to others, trade declined and business moved elsewhere.

References

Alengry, C (1915), Les foires de Champagne: étude d’histoire économique, Paris.

Bautier, R-H (1952), “Les principales étapes du développement des foires de Champagne”, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 96(2): 314-326.

Bautier, R-H (1970), “The Fairs of Champagne”, in Essays in French Economic History, ed. R. Cameron, Homewood, IL: 42-63.

Bourquelot, F (1839-40), Histoire de Provins. 2 vols. Paris.

Bourquelot, F (1865), Études sur les foires de Champagne, sur la nature, l’étendue et les règles du commerce qui s’y faisait aux XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles. 2 vols. Paris.

Dasgupta, P S (2000), “Economic Progress and the Idea of Social Capital”, in P S Dasgupta and I Serageldin (eds) Social Capital: a Multifaceted Perspective, Washington: 325-424.

Dixit, A K (2004), Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Modes of Governance. Princeton, NJ.

Dixit, A K (2009), “Governance Institutions and Economic Activity”, American Economic Review 99(1): 5-24.

Edwards, J S S and S C Ogilvie (2012), “What Lessons for Economic Development Can We Draw from the Champagne Fairs?”, Explorations in Economic History 49 (2): 131-148.

Greif, A (2002), “Institutions and Impersonal Exchange: from Communal to Individual Responsibility”, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 158(1): 168-204.

Greif, A (2006a), Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, Cambridge.

Greif, A (2006b), “History Lessons: the Birth of Impersonal Exchange: the Community Responsibility System and Impartial Justice”, Journal of Economic Perspectives 20(2): 221-236.

Helpman, E (2004), The Mystery of Economic Growth, Cambridge, MA.

Milgrom, P R, D C North and B R Weingast (1990), “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: the Medieval Law Merchant, Private Judges and the Champagne Fairs”, Economics and Politics 2(1): 1-23.

Ogilvie, S (2011), Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800. Cambridge.

Ogilvie, S and A W Carus (2014), “Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective” in S Durlauf and P Aghion (eds), Handbook of Economic Growth., Amsterdam, vol 2A: 405-514.

Terrasse, V (2005), Provins: une commune du comté de Champagne et de Brie (1152-1355), Paris.

World Bank (2002), World Development Report 2002: Building Institutions for Markets, Oxford.

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

10 comments

  1. James Levy

    Economists have a fascinating way of never thinking like businessmen. If I’m a trader, my overwhelming concerns are 1) that nobody can kill me and take my stuff, and 2) all payments will be prompt and in full (or, conversely, that the goods I pay for will actually be delivered in the quantity and quality I paid for). By myself, I can guarantee neither of those things. Give me a government with police power and laws and I am more than half way there. For people who tell you that socialism can’t work because of “human nature”, the libertarian/free market types assume a world with unlimited trust horizons, men who keep their word, and honor among thieves. However, the “natural” tendency in all situations where authority breaks down or is absent is to hoard, not to truck, barter, or trade.

    1. Boatwright

      James Levy makes an excellent point. Which leads to the further observation that ideologically driven economic theory never lets the real world of human behavior interfere with its a-priori assumption of social perfection. Reduced it goes like this: All we need to do to make us perfect is to let us have complete freedom to be perfect, therefore will will be perfect. This is a childish syllogism

    2. SufferinSuccotash

      People will truck, barter and trade or cheat, steal and pillage depending on what sort of institutions they have. And institutions don’t just happen.

    3. makedoanmend

      Of course economists don’t think like a business person. The vast majority of humanity does not think like a business person. The ideological trope of our increasingly disfunctional societies is that we should all think like business people – in every sphere of human acitivity.

      As a result, I see this so-called business thinking among the indoctrinated every day and such behaviour is paltry nourishment to the human spirit. It also seems to be a very poor substitute for the vast array of methods of interacting on a human scale that we have evolved as a species throughout history.

      We have great imaginations, have produced some wonderful cultures, traditions and arts but yet we seem to need to pigeon-hole our abilities into some ideological straight jacket such as communism or capitalism. (And as a side note, the room I had as an invididual to express myself or just to be left alone in public spaces keeps shrinking every year as the neo-liberal agenda of “commidification-of-everything” takes complete hold on every aspect of our free market society. Such a thing a freedom, these days, is a very expensive.)

      When nothing is left to commodify/exploit (commodiploit?), can we commodify the void?

      Whilst I do not believe nature abhors a vacuum, society seethes in the void? Avoid the void.

  2. DJG

    Another counterexample to the thinking that private institutions are somehow more effective is the Serene Republic of Venice, which some have accused of being a business class with a state attached to it. Yet for a thousand years Venice was known for careful application of its laws and generally good statecraft. I am reminded that the Venetians required double signatures on official documents–one of the purposes of the state is not to tolerate or engage in fraud.

    A counterexample to the Venetians is Genoa, which tended to treat the position of doge (they had one, too) as semi-private. Genoa has a history of civil wars, sudden regime change, and a curious hankering for dealing in slaves.

  3. DJG

    The history of Barcelona can be invoked here, too. The city’s fortunes tended to rise when the local institutions like the Generalitat were powerful. When the Castilians intruded and treated their lands as private property to be exploited, the city declined.

  4. JTMcPhee

    So is the libertarian case proved by the author’s observations? The part, at least, about having ‘the state’ be just the perfect size and shape to create and enforce just the precise regulations and behaviors that are necessary to free the freepers to optimize markets?

  5. Sluggeaux

    This piece (and the discussion that follows) is important.

    Institutional dispute resolution and contract enforcement mechanisms are crucial to civilized society. Anyone who has raised a child knows that human beings are born neither altruistic nor trustworthy. Commerce and daily life become impossible without, “social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings.”

    This basic reality is crucial to understanding the persistence of the Taliban or the rise of the so-called Islamic State. Very little general interest research has been done on the issue, but the Shari’a is most significant as an organized system of law courts through which all manner of legal disputes may be resolved — especially those involving mercantile contracts. The persistence of institutions such as the Mafia, Camorra, and N’drangheta in the Italian mezzogiorno or the Mexican Narcotraficante cartels is directly related to the lack of free access to dispute resolution institutions for the general population of those regions. It is no different in regions where U.S. intervention has contributed to the collapse of secular legal systems where day-to-day disputes may be resolved without resorting to blood-feuds and vendettas. Under Shari’a, certainty about the courts following and enforcing the law is at the very center of Muslim piety for the general population.

    This is also why my blood runs cold seeing the actions of the Bush 43 and Obama Justice Department — who propound non-enforcement of laws and contracts when it benefits their cronies, but continue to favor mass-incarceration for those displaced from employment and safe housing by the greed of the infallible class.

    Yesterday Ed Vulliamy interviewed Roberto Saviano in The Guardian about this very issue:

    “The law is supposed to be for everybody,” Saviano tells me, “but the rules are made by the so-called men of honour. This is how narco-traffic explains the world, by embracing all the contradictions of the world. To succeed in narco-traffic, you apply the rules to break the law. And today, any big corporation can only succeed if it adopts the same principle – if its rules demand that it break the law.”

  6. susan the other

    so letting big corporations write trade pacts in secret has been restraint of trade… for a thousand years or more

  7. rob adams

    so who are these economists that think the chicken came before the egg & economies require no governing structure to exist? I’d like to add them to my Christmas card “You are a complete idiot” list.

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