Power and Pains of Polysemy: Maritime Trade, Averages, and Institutional Development in the Low Countries (15th–16th Centuries)

Gijs Dreijer (Dr. Mult.) is a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University. In 2021, he received his dual Ph.D. degree at the University of Exeter and Vrije Universiteit Brussel with a dissertation on Averages in the Low Countries. This is his first monograph.

"Gijs Dreijer provides an extensive and detailed explanatory text that will be required reading for anyone looking to research the late-medieval and early modern maritime world of insurance and risk management. … Economic historians, especially those interested in how institutions developed, will find the book valuable in many ways, but perhaps its most important contribution is how the practices and applications of general average had an outsized influence on the development of laws and legal systems – institutions that are often held up as key to the success of western Europe in its eventual dominance of the global economy." - Jeremy Land, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in: International Journal of Maritime History (0)0"Dreijers boek biedt als eerste een systematisch overzicht van averij-grosse en andersoortige averijen in de rechtstheorie en -praktijk van de zuidelijke Lage Landen in de vroegmoderne periode. [...] Voor de rechtshistoricus biedt de analyse van een omvangrijk bestand aan primaire (archief)bronnen een onmisbare ingang op de juridische en commerciële praktijk. Het boek vormt daarmee een waardevolle aanvulling op de bestaande rechtshistorische literatuur. [...] The Power and Pains of Polysemy is een verrijking voor het onderzoek naar het vroegmoderne maritieme privaatrecht." - Tim Lubbers, Leiden University, in: Pro Memorie, Vol. 25.2 (2023), p. 277-282

• AcknowledgementsList of Images, Tables, Figures, Maps and GraphsAbbreviations1 Introduction1.1 General Average: A Long History from Rhodes to the Ever Given1.2 Transaction Costs, Protection Costs and Institutional Development1.3 Maritime Trade and Risk Management1.4 General Average and the Lex Maritima1.5 Introducing the Low Countries’ Maritime Economy1.6 State Formation, Jurisdictional Complexity and Legal Sources1.7 Sources, Approach and Structure of the BookPart 1: The Development of General Average and Risk Management2 The Power and Pains of Polysemy2.1 Introduction: The Polysemic Meanings of Averages2.2 Etymological Origins of GA2.3 The Principle of GA Explained2.4 Contemporary GA and Historical Reality2.5 Averages in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries2.6 Risk Management2.7 Cost Management2.8 Conclusion3 General Average in Formal Sources of Law3.1 Introduction3.2 GA in Sources of Formal Law3.3 GA, Salvage, Shipwreck and Ship Collisions: Shifting Legal Boundaries3.4 Weytsen’s Tractaet van Avarien3.5 Conclusion4 GA in Legal Practice4.1 Introduction4.2 The Governance of GA Procedure in Bruges and Antwerp4.3 The Position of the Shipmaster and Legal Strategies4.4 The Insurability of GA, Moral Hazard and Changes in Risk Distribution4.5 ‘Atypical’ GA Cases4.6 ConclusionPart 2: Varieties of Averages and Cost Management5 Contractual Varieties of Averages and Cost Management5.1 Introduction5.2 Contractual Varieties of Averages5.3 The flete y averías as a Cost Management Structure5.4 Conclusion: Averages and Cost Management6 Consular Averages, Compulsory Contributions and Protection Costs6.1 Introduction6.2 The Seville avería as an Example of Protection Costs6.3 Privileges and the droit d’avarie: False Friends?6.4 Disputes on the avería de nación6.5 The avería(s)6.6 ConclusionConclusionAppendixBibliographyGeneral Index