Conflict Resolution in the Countryside - new paper on SSRN

Streitschlichtung auf dem Lande - Untersuchungen zur südwestdeutschen Schiedsordnung zwischen Spätmittelalter und Bauernkrieg by David von Mayenburg has recently been published in our SSRN Research Paper Series.

On the basis of late medieval and early modern records, the article examines the rules of arbitration in the agrarian German southwest. It can be shown that not only in the cities, but also in the countryside people could rely on a set of rules which was - although based on custom - basically governed by legal norms. This order of conflict resolution was to a certain extent able to keep rural conflicts at bay. But from the 1490s onwards the side of the lords was questioning this order and therefore was responsible for the escalation which led to the Great Peasant War of 1525.