What Lessons for Economic Development Can We Draw from the Champagne Fairs?



keeper violated the safe conduct by imprisoning an Ypres merchant travelling to the
Champagne fairs, the count’s fair-wardens threatened to exclude all citizens of Artois
from future fairs in retribution.18

The counts of Champagne also ensured that merchants were secure at the fairs
themselves, enforcing property rights through their own law-courts (as we shall see),
employing their own officials to police the streets, and cooperating with municipal and
ecclesiastical officials to guarantee security in the fair-towns.19 Alengry argues that the
creation by the 1170s of dedicated fair-wardens made an important contribution to the
ascendancy of the fairs ‘because the wardens were independent of the tyrannies and
subjections of the local
prévôté, since they depended solely on the sovereign’.20

A second institutional service provided by the rulers of Champagne was contract-
enforcement. The counts of Champagne operated a four-tiered system of public law-
courts which judged lawsuits and officially witnessed contracts with a view to
subsequent enforcement. The highest princely court in Champagne was the Jours de
Troyes, a tribunal which judged important cases as a court of first instance and also
heard appeals from lower courts. The second tier of the princely justice-system
consisted of the courts of the four
baillis (bailiffs) which judged cases involving high-
status parties such as nobles, religious houses, and foreign merchants. The third tier
consisted of the courts of the
prévôts (provosts), numbering 54 in 1285, who as
representatives of the prince rendered justice to commoners. The lowest tier of the
princely justice-system consisted of village courts operated by
maires (mayors),
officials appointed by the
prévôt to render justice to the inhabitants of each village.
Towns, in contrast to villages, were subject to the direct jurisdiction of the local
bailli
or prévôt, unless they managed to obtain commune privileges. These entitled a town to
have a mayor and 12
échevins (aldermen), appointed by the prince, with jurisdiction
over cases involving urban inhabitants although also open to outsiders. After
Champagne became part of France in 1285, the French crown retained this four-tiered

18 Laurent (1935), 295, 303-04.

19 Bourquelot (1839-40), I:119; Bourquelot (1865), II:20, 219-20; Laurent (1935), 279-80; Terrasse
(2005), 228-32.

20 Alengry (1915), 108.



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