Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

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Wednesday 12 April 2023 14.00 - 16.00
G-3 CRI03 Migration and Crime in Early Modern Europe
B32
Network: Criminal Justice Chair: Joachim Eibach
Organizers: Karlijn Luk, Samantha Sint Nicolaas Discussant: Joachim Eibach
Tina Adam : Migrants Face Trial in Bern: Migration Policy and its Impact on Criminal Justice in the Seventeenth Century
Recently, social historians have begun to take more interest in the inequality fostered by privileges in the early modern social order. In this paper, the resulting conflictual nature of the heterogeneous community and its institutional response will be further examined, focusing on the aspect of migration, which is associated with ... (Show more)
Recently, social historians have begun to take more interest in the inequality fostered by privileges in the early modern social order. In this paper, the resulting conflictual nature of the heterogeneous community and its institutional response will be further examined, focusing on the aspect of migration, which is associated with differences in social and legal disadvantages.

In this respect, the city state of Bern, which consists of a small, urban center but has a large rural territory, needs to be examined more closely. The Protestant Bernese authorities were eager to maintain public order and pursued a repressive policy towards strangers. Hence, the following questions are raised: How did institutional control and migration regulation mechanisms affect migrant people? Moreover, how was discrimination socially produced and reproduced in the criminal process? There are clear indications that institutional control played an important role in shaping social inequality. In analysing criminal records and legal sources, this paper shows how strong formal control, visible in migration and settlement policies and court practice, reinforced inequality. In doing so, the examination provides new insights into understanding the interdependence of migration policy, criminal justice, and inequality. (Show less)

Karlijn Luk : Conflicts between Migrants and Locals in Early Modern Leiden and Rotterdam
By looking at migrant and local co-existence in a time and place that is often considered the epitome of ‘tolerance’, but more importantly, a time and place that is very much characterized by diversity because of the plethora of migrants from various backgrounds that came to early modern Dutch cities ... (Show more)
By looking at migrant and local co-existence in a time and place that is often considered the epitome of ‘tolerance’, but more importantly, a time and place that is very much characterized by diversity because of the plethora of migrants from various backgrounds that came to early modern Dutch cities such as Leiden and Rotterdam, this paper aims to challenge the dominant rosy picture of the ‘tolerant’ Dutch Republic.

Although the transformational impact of migration on a society has been widely studied, also for the early modern period, what this meant for the day to day realities of early modern migrants and locals living in these Dutch cities has thus far remained understudied within migration history. Building on previous research concerning the ways in which migration could potentially be an instigator for increased tension within communities, this paper hypothesizes that there were not only more conflicts between locals and migrants than previously assumed, but that the outsider-status of migrants was more likely to pose a disadvantage in both formal and semi-formal processes of conflict regulation.

Judicial sources and other sources of conflict management in early modern Dutch cities hold a wealth of information on everyday interactions between newcomers and a city’s local population. These types of sources have as of yet however, not been systematically mined for this purpose. With the purpose of analysing the daily practices of local an migrant co-existence through the use of these sources of social control, this paper will focus on conflicts between migrants and locals that eventually reached the courts as cases of insult or reputation damage, disturbances of public order and violent crimes. The paper will reconstruct the courses that these conflicts took in order to end up at the criminal court by considering closely who where involved in these conflicts, how the conflicts started and how they progressed, how they were dealt with by the authorities, and by looking more intently at the way certain characteristics such as gender, age, profession and migration-status played into both the course of these conflicts and their treatment before the early modern courts. (Show less)

Samantha Sint Nicolaas, Ariadne Schmidt : Zeroing in on the Criminal Migrant: Shifting Patterns in the Origins of Migrant Defendants in Early Modern Amsterdam, 1620-1790
The early modern Dutch Republic has often been lauded for its ‘tolerance’, referring usually to the ‘open’ policies towards migrants, as well as the harmonious (interreligious) co-existence between migrants and their neighbours. That early modern Amsterdam, in particular, attracted a consistently large migrant population is well known. The religious tolerance, ... (Show more)
The early modern Dutch Republic has often been lauded for its ‘tolerance’, referring usually to the ‘open’ policies towards migrants, as well as the harmonious (interreligious) co-existence between migrants and their neighbours. That early modern Amsterdam, in particular, attracted a consistently large migrant population is well known. The religious tolerance, the economic opportunity structures, and the poor relief provisions made Amsterdam a particularly attractive destination for both foreign and inland migrants alike.

Sources such as marriage records and guild membership lists have recorded many of these ‘successful’ encounters between migrants and locals, illustrating mechanisms of integration and social mobility, but they are ultimately skewed towards those patterns of ‘positive’ integration, through marriage or careers. At the same time, the rising levels of urbanization across early modern Europe have been linked to the overrepresentation of migrants before criminal courts; furthermore historians have demonstrated that the interplay of migration and crime was a continuous issue of official concern from the sixteenth century onwards, and a crucial impetus behind the expansion and professionalization of the police forces across Europe. As yet, however, little is known about the origins and migratory trajectories of those migrants whose experiences in the city were less ‘successful’.

This paper will look anew at the picture of migration into ‘Golden Age Amsterdam’ through the increasingly entangled lens of migration and crime. It will zero in on those migrants whose journey to Amsterdam included or ended up in a visit to the city’s jail, exploring to what extent judicial records can offer a fresh perspective on the shifting migration patterns into the city. The paper will reconstruct and visualize the geographic spread of migrant origins, consider the distances travelled, as well as any gendered differences in migration patterns. In turn these patterns will be contextualized in relation to – what is known about – more general patterns of migration and to changes and developments in international politics and events, as well as Amsterdam’s changing regulatory attempts to control the movement of people in and out of the city’s gates (Show less)



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