Stack right

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The staple right or settlement rights ( lat. Jus emporii , actually "Markets" in the sense of "resale rights") in was the Middle Ages , the right of a city to require overhauling merchants to have their goods in the city for a certain period in the storehouse unloading, “stacking” and offering (compulsory sale). In some cases, dealers were able to exempt themselves from the stacking obligation by paying a stacking fee . Together with the stacking right, the cities usually had a right of handling . Both rights made the goods concerned more expensive and promoted the interests of urban businesses.

Historical examples

The Brunswick Duke Otto I endowed the city of Münden , which is situated on three rivers, with the Mündener stacking right in 1247 , which was valid until 1824. It is one of the oldest documented stacking rights.

Konrad von Hochstaden , Archbishop of Cologne , granted the city of Cologne stacking rights on May 7, 1259. All goods - especially those transported on the Rhine - now had to be offered for sale to the citizens of Cologne for three days . This regulation provided the Cologne patricians with considerable wealth.

Many other cities conveniently located on trade routes also had this right, including Mainz , Frankfurt am Main , Heilbronn , Neuss , Minden , Frankfurt (Oder) , Görlitz (1339), Berlin , Magdeburg , Itzehoe (1260), Erfurt , Vienna ( 1221), the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck , Hamburg , Rostock , Stade (1259), Bremen and Zwolle (1438) or Bozen (1470) on the Brennerstraße that crosses the Alps . Lüneburg was granted stacking rights in 1392.

A further complicating factor for the merchants was that the cities in question could not be bypassed and thus attracted trade in a larger area. In 1507 , Leipzig received the mile privilege from Maximilian I and was able to extend his stacking right to 15 miles (approx. 115 km) around the city.

Above all, perishable goods such as dairy products, meat products, fish and goods from long-distance trade were met by this edition with a great deal of trade difficulty.

The right was abolished - as a result of resolutions of the Congress of Vienna of 1815 - on individual flows through the Elbe Shipping Act of 1821, the Weser Shipping Act of 1823, the Mainz Act on Rhine Shipping of 1831 and generally through the establishment of the German Customs Association in 1834.

Stages of mercantilist trade policy

In his discussion of mercantilist literature, Joseph Schumpeter divides export monopoly practices with regard to stacking rights into three phases:

  1. Corporally organized merchants (example: the Merchant Adventurers ) turn certain cities into central branches in order to be able to better control their trade.
  2. The cities themselves force the passing merchants to offer their goods on site, subject to restrictions that are advantageous for the city. From the 13th century on, the staple right spread from Italy ( Genoa , Venice ) across Europe to Russia and England ( Ordinance of the Staple by Edward III ).
  3. This led to the development of the practice of directing world trade for the actual or supposed good of a country into specific, pre-established channels in order to damage other countries (the English navigation file of 1660 and the batch file of 1663). This system eventually gradually turned into protectionism in the modern sense.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ English Wikipedia: Statute of the Staple
  2. ↑ Joseph A. Schumpeter (Ed. Elizabeth B. Schumpeter): History of economic analysis. First part of the volume. Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965. p. 429, note 10.