Special Issue: Property in South Asian history

The Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient has published a special issue: "Repossessing Property in South Asia: Land, Rights, and Law across the Early Modern/Modern Divide." Here is the Table of Contents from vol.61 (2018):

• Repossessing Property in South Asia: Land, Rights, and Law across the Early Modern/Modern Divide-Introduction. by Faisal Chaudhry
• The Theory and Practice of Property in Premodern South Asia: Disparities and Convergences. by Timothy Lubin
• Property and Social Relations in Mughal India: Litigations and Disputes at the Qazi’s Court in Urban Localities, 17th-18th Centuries. by Farhat Hasan
• Revenue Farming Reconsidered: Tenurial Rights and Tenurial Duties in Early Modern India, ca. 1556-1818. by Sudev Sheth
• Property and Its Rule (in Late Indo-Islamicate and Early Colonial) South Asia: What’s in a Name? by Faisal Chaudhry
• Sovereignty, Property and Land Development: The East India Company in Madras. by Bhavani Raman
• The Problem of Property: Local Histories and Political-Economic Categories in British India. by Upal Chakrabarti
• Fluid Histories: Swamps, Law and the Company-State in Colonial Bengal. by Debjani Bhattacharyya

Further information is available here.

Pihlajamäki and friends on the history of commercial law

Heikki Pihlajamäki (University of Helsinki), Albrecht Cordes (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main),Serge Dauchy (CNRS Lille-France, University of Saint-Louis in Brussels), and Dave De ruysscher (Tilburg University, Vrije Universiteit Brussels) have co-edited Understanding the Sources of Early Modern and Modern Commercial Law published by Brill. From the press:

The contributions of Understanding the Sources of Early Modern and Modern Commercial Law: Courts, Statutes, Contracts, and Legal Scholarship show the wealth of sources which historians of commercial law use to approach their subject. Depending on the subject, historical research on mercantile law must be ready to open up to different approaches and sources in a truly imaginative and interdisciplinary way. This, more than many other branches of law, has always been largely non-state law. Normative, "official," sources are important in commercial law as well, but other sources are often needed to complement them. The articles of the volume present an excellent assemblage of those sources. 

 Contents after the break:

1 Introduction

  Heikki Pihlajamäki, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy and Dave De ruysscher

2 Mercantile Conflict Resolution in Practice: Connecting Legal and Diplomatic Sources from Danzig c. 1460–1580

  Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz

3 Justitia in Commerciis: Public Governance and Commercial Litigation before the Great Council of Mechlin in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century

  Alain Wijffels

4 Honore et utile: The Approaches and Practice of Sixteenth-century Genoese Merchant Custom

  Ricardo Galliano Court

5 The Abandonment to the Insurers in Sixteenth-century Insurance Practice: Comparative Remarks and (A Few) Methodological Notes

  Guido Rossi

6 Historiographical Opportunities of Notarized Partnership Agreements Recorded in the Early Modern Low Countries

  Bram Van Hofstraeten

7 How Normative were Merchant Guidebooks? Of Customs, Practices, and … Good Advice (Antwerp, Sixteenth Century)

  Dave De ruysscher

8 Sources of Commercial Law in the Dutch Republic and Kingdom

  Boudewijn Sirks

9 The Files and Exhibits of the Imperial Chamber Court and Aulic Council as Sources of Commercial Law

  Anja Amend-Traut

10 Legal, Moral-Theological, and Genuinely Economic Opinions on Questions of Trade and Economy in Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-century Germany

  Eberhard Isenmann

11 The Birth of Commercial Law in Early Modern Sweden: Sources and Historiography

  Heikki Pihlajamäki

12 Svea Court of Appeal Records as a Source of Commercial Law: The Founding Year of 1614

  Mia Korpiola

13 Tracing the Speculation Bubble of 1799 in Newspapers, Court Records, and Other Sources

  Margrit Schulte Beerbühl

14 The Rise of Usages in French Commercial Law and Jurisprudence (Seventeenth-Nineteenth Centuries): Some Examples

  Edouard Richard

15 On the Origins of the French Commercial Code: Vicissitudes of the Gorneau Draft

  Olivier Descamps

16 Court Records as Sources for the History of Commercial Law: The Oberappellationsgericht Lübeck as a Commercial Court (1820–1879)

  Peter Oestmann

Further information is available here.

Berkel and friends on legal sources and Muslim societies

Maaike van Berkel, Radboud University, Léon Buskens, Leiden University, and Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Leiden University have edited the collection, Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies with Brill. From the publisher:

This volume is a tribute to the work of legal and social historian and Arabist Rudolph Peters (University of Amsterdam). Presenting case studies from different periods and areas of the Muslim world, the book examines the use of legal documents for the study of the history of Muslim societies. From examinations of the conceptual status of legal documents to comparative studies of the development of legal formulae and the socio-economic or political historical information documents contain, the aim is to approach legal documents as specialised texts belonging to a specific social domain, while simultaneously connecting them to other historical sources. It discusses the daily functioning of legal institutions, the reflections of regime changes on legal documentation, daily life, and the materiality of legal documents. 

Contributors are Maaike van Berkel, Maurits H. van den Boogert, Léon Buskens, Khaled Fahmy, Aharon Layish, Sergio Carro Martín, Brinkley Messick, Toru Miura, Christian Müller, Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Mathieu Tillier, and Amalia Zomeño.

Contents after the break: