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



By the 1170s, as mentioned above, the counts of Champagne had supplemented
ordinary public legal provision at the fairs by appointing special officials called fair-
wardens (
gardes des foires).30 They were first recorded in 1174, when they were
required to proclaim a regulation about weights and measures at the start of each fair.31
By the 1220s at latest, the fair-wardens were operating a continual court throughout
the duration of each fair, at which merchants could register commercial contracts and
unpaid creditors could bring complaints. The first recorded case of a merchant contract
being witnessed by the fair-wardens dates from 1225, at which point the wardens were
still using their own personal seals.32 At some periods, as in Provins in 1228, the same
man was both fair-warden and princely
bailli, and it is unclear in which capacity he
was judging which cases.33 By 1247, the fair-wardens were witnessing merchant
contracts using an official fair seal.34 In 1252, the fair-wardens were operating
alongside the princely
baillis in dispensing justice to foreign merchants at the Provins
fairs.35 Bautier argues that until c. 1260, the wardens’ jurisdictional purview was still
limited, since merchant contracts more frequently bore ecclesiastical than fair-
wardens’ seals.36 However, merchants did not record all debts at the fairs using sealed
contracts. Many sales, particularly of cloth, were made on short-term credit, which
was recorded by money-changers or notaries, or simply agreed before witnesses.37
Defaults on such debts could be referred to the fair-wardens even when the original
contracts had not been sealed by the wardens.38 By the 1260s, the fair-wardens
possessed powers of confiscation, fining, and incarceration, and by the 1270s were
declaring their mandate to ensure everywhere the fulfillment of any contract issued at
the fairs, ‘in the name of the count of Champagne’.39

But public alternatives to the princely court system did exist, and this was another
strength of contract enforcement at the Champagne fairs, since jurisdictional
competition created incentives for courts to provide impartial judgments. For one

30 Goldschmidt (1891), 229-30.

31 Arbois de Jubainville and Pigeotte (1859-66), III:235-6, 367; Bautier (1953), 118.

32 Bautier (1953), 118-19.

33 Chapin (1937), 126.

34 Bautier (1953), 118-19.

35 Bourquelot (1839-40), II:409.

36 Bautier (1953), 119, 122-3.

37 Bautier (1953), 119-20.

38 Bassermann (1911), 26-9.

39 Bautier (1952), 320.



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