Research interests: premodern conflict management, mobility, identity and alterity, intergroup dynamics, language and communication; the Hanse, premodern Scandinavia; premodern commercial cities in Europe; premodern maritime trade in Europe; food and drink in medieval Europe
Research approach: primarily social history, engaging in topics and debates of political, economic, legal and cultural history
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Current research:
2018-2023
NWO VIDI project ‘MANAGING MULTI-LEVEL CONFLICTS IN COMMERCIAL CITIES IN NORTHERN EUROPE (C. 1350-1570)’
We all want to know how to end conflicts. That is why conflict resolution has been at the centre of academic debates in relation to individual, group and large-scale clashes. Yet conflicts are not only brought to an end. The current challenge is to reconsider classical paradigms for dealing with conflicts and anchor this change in historical reflection. In this project, ‘conflict managers’ in premodern commercial cities in northern Europe open a new door to understanding how conflicts were dealt with in the past. I propose a five-partite model of conflict management, consisting of prevention, provocation, maintenance of the status quo, escalation and resolution. Combining insights from economic, legal and political history, and aiming to contribute to these fields with a fundamentally novel approach, I analyse individual, group and large-scale conflicts as one system of relations, connected through the group of people who dealt with them: the faces of institutions in premodern Europe.
Conflict managers were embedded in merchant networks and fulfilled multiple and flexible roles such as mediators, judges and urban diplomats. I hypothesise that the development of sophisticated management strategies, designed by and put into practice by experienced conflict managers, was essential for safeguarding the autonomy of premodern commercial cities in northern Europe. A transnational and comparative analysis of city cases from c. 1350-1570 involving varying degrees of autonomy will test this hypothesis and reveal how cities in northern Europe responded to state formation and complex changes.
The insights from this project will contribute directly to research on contemporary conflicts by showing why we today should look beyond conflict resolution and fixed roles of conflict managers. The project is thus a relevant contribution to modern Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and economic diplomacy, disciplines which combine theory with practice to explore alternatives to law and political intervention.
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key words: Hanse, conflict resolution, traders, social and economic history, Late Middle Ages & Early Modern Period
2009-2010
RUBICON NWO project at the Department of History, Leiden University, the Netherlands:
Hollanders as ‘the Other’. Late medieval perceptions of identity in Hanseatic sources
(NWO/The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research/ Rubicon project: http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_7MDDVF )
Research approach: primarily social history, engaging in topics and debates of political, economic, legal and cultural history
----------------------------
Current research:
2018-2023
NWO VIDI project ‘MANAGING MULTI-LEVEL CONFLICTS IN COMMERCIAL CITIES IN NORTHERN EUROPE (C. 1350-1570)’
We all want to know how to end conflicts. That is why conflict resolution has been at the centre of academic debates in relation to individual, group and large-scale clashes. Yet conflicts are not only brought to an end. The current challenge is to reconsider classical paradigms for dealing with conflicts and anchor this change in historical reflection. In this project, ‘conflict managers’ in premodern commercial cities in northern Europe open a new door to understanding how conflicts were dealt with in the past. I propose a five-partite model of conflict management, consisting of prevention, provocation, maintenance of the status quo, escalation and resolution. Combining insights from economic, legal and political history, and aiming to contribute to these fields with a fundamentally novel approach, I analyse individual, group and large-scale conflicts as one system of relations, connected through the group of people who dealt with them: the faces of institutions in premodern Europe.
Conflict managers were embedded in merchant networks and fulfilled multiple and flexible roles such as mediators, judges and urban diplomats. I hypothesise that the development of sophisticated management strategies, designed by and put into practice by experienced conflict managers, was essential for safeguarding the autonomy of premodern commercial cities in northern Europe. A transnational and comparative analysis of city cases from c. 1350-1570 involving varying degrees of autonomy will test this hypothesis and reveal how cities in northern Europe responded to state formation and complex changes.
The insights from this project will contribute directly to research on contemporary conflicts by showing why we today should look beyond conflict resolution and fixed roles of conflict managers. The project is thus a relevant contribution to modern Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and economic diplomacy, disciplines which combine theory with practice to explore alternatives to law and political intervention.
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Recent research
2011-2015
VENI NWO project / Leiden University
Dealing with foreign traders, dealing with conflict. Strategies of conflict resolution and their role in trade relations in the Baltic c. 1450-1580.
Summary:
Dealing with foreign traders, dealing with conflict. Strategies of conflict resolution and their role in trade relations in the Baltic c. 1450-1580.
Summary:
The biggest nightmare for an internationally-oriented trader is conflict. Both when armed conflict breaks out, or when he ends up in disputes with foreign partners, a trader counts his losses. His goods and the position he has attained on the market may be gone in no time. For that reason, effective conflict resolution has always been a vested interest in economic relations. The efficacy of modern conflict resolution is a well-developed area of social research, and today’s results trigger questions regarding the diplomatic and legal strategies employed in the past. Yet until now, the focus has been mostly on the trade politics of kings, princes or local authorities. This research project addresses a different dimension of historical conflict resolution, namely how traders who engaged in foreign trade chose to resolve their conflicts, and the rationale of these choices. The setting is Danzig (Gdańsk) c. 1450-1580, the gateway to Baltic grain trade. As one of the main European commercial hubs, burgeoned from the commercial exchange between foreigners. In this project, I will analyse the policy (development of norms), practice (employment of strategies) and perception (contemporary evaluation) of conflict resolution. Special attention will be paid to the language of conflict resolution, i.e. the tools traders employed, ranging from flattery, through evoking shared interests, to threats and blackmail. The novel approach is to examine conflict resolution on three levels: micro (individuals), meso (groups) and macro (countries/Hanse towns); this will re-evaluate the effects of ‘national’ conflicts on relations of groups and individuals. The analysis will be largely based on unpublished sources from the Gdańsk archives.
key words: Hanse, conflict resolution, traders, social and economic history, Late Middle Ages & Early Modern Period
2009-2010
RUBICON NWO project at the Department of History, Leiden University, the Netherlands:
Hollanders as ‘the Other’. Late medieval perceptions of identity in Hanseatic sources
(NWO/The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research/ Rubicon project: http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_7MDDVF )
