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Legal history: western Europe & Scandinavia: MA: Law merchant

General overviews

Commercial law -- history
Commercial law -- Europe -- History

Commerce -- History -- Medieval, 500-1500

Europe -- Economic conditions -- To 1492
Europe -- Commerce -- History -- To 1500
Economic development -- Europe -- History -- To 1500

Lex mercatoria: trading laws, business structures and banking

Origins in town statutes, guild regulation, fairs (piepowder courts) and maritime, sea or admiralty law

Earliest surviving evidence comes from the Mediterranean trade
Nomos Rodiōn nautikos or Lex Rhodia (Rhodian Sea Law)
Justinian's Digest - Book XIV (Title I-II) (529 - 565 A.D.)
Maritime Ordinances of Trani (1063 A.D.)
Capitulare navium (Venice,1205)
Statuta et ordinamenta super navibus (Venice, 1255)
Costumes de la mar (aka Consolato del Mar) (Barcelona, 1258)

From (13th onwards, atlantic ocean trading practices survive in contemporary documents and become viewed as a system sufficiently distinct to be studied separately from the Romano-Rhodian system. The "foundation" document of this legal tradition is often referred to as the Rôles of Oléron (or Jugements de la Mer), though it may have been itself a copy.

Finding out about the context

Some subject searches to try in SOLO
Economic history -- Medieval, 500-1500 
Europe -- Commerce -- History
Europe -- Economic conditions -- To 1492
Commerce -- History -- Medieval, 500-1500
Commerce -- History -- 16th century
Guilds -- Europe -- History
Banks and banking -- Europe -- History
Hanseatic League -- History

International sea trade

Maritime law - history