The law won? – Maritime courts, the labour market and seamen's litigation in early modern Holland and Zeeland (1641–1692)

Abstract

In the second half of the seventeenth century, three cities in Holland and Zeeland established maritime courts. While their competence included adjudication over all maritime disputes, they were specifically designed to resolve disputes between crews and their skippers over wages. The municipal authorities felt that recurring violence on the streets made such legal resolution important, and existing maritime legislation codified in Habsburg times was expanded with regulations that dealt with mariners as employees, fighting for wages. This article analyses the historical development of maritime law in the Habsburg Netherlands and subsequently the United Provinces in relationship to the rights and duties of sailors. It discusses the development of the maritime court system and makes a beginning with quantitative research on the daily experience of litigants who appeared before these courts in Amsterdam and Rotterdam between 1641 and the end of the eighteenth century.