This essay focuses on the development of General Average (GA) and varieties of so-called maritime averages (hereafter simply Averages) during the sixteenth century in Bruges and Antwerp, the two major commercial cities of the Southern Low Countries.Footnote 1 Whereas historians have paid abundant attention to the development of marine insurance in the two cities, other tools of maritime risk management have been virtually neglected.Footnote 2 GA was nevertheless a major issue for both local and foreign merchants residing in the Low Countries and was widely used by these groups, as were other varieties of Averages. Resulting from a combination of technological change, more complex trading arrangements, the presence of foreign merchant communities (the so-called nationes) and increasing legislative activity by various governmental organisations in the Low Countries, normative rules on GA and other Averages underwent major changes during the sixteenth century. This essay builds on the literature on the history of commercial and maritime law by studying the development of GA and other Averages in the Southern Low Countries during this period.Footnote 3 This gives valuable insights into maritime risk management and forms a central principle in analyses of transnational maritime law.Footnote 4

Given its reach throughout Europe, GA was what Ron Harris conceptualises as a ‘migratory institution’.Footnote 5 From a legal perspective, GA moreover serves as an excellent case study for the interplay between various legal cultures, as merchants from England, the Hanseatic cities, France and the Iberian and Italian Peninsulas were present in the Low Countries from the thirteenth century onwards.Footnote 6 Iberian, and particularly Castilian, merchants were especially influential in the development of GA and other varieties of Averages during this period in the Southern Low Countries.Footnote 7 This essay therefore investigates the extent to which Castilian merchants were able to influence the normative framework and legal practice of GA and other Averages. The essay does so by studying both formal written legal sources and evidence from legal practice. The formal sources include Ordonnances by the Habsburg sovereigns regarding maritime law (primarily those of 1551 and 1563), Quinten Weytsen’s 1564 legal treatise on GA, the Hordenanzas compiled by the Castilian natio in Bruges (1569), and Antwerp municipal law of 1608 (the so-called Compilatae).Footnote 8 The historical evidence from legal practice comes from the Castilian consular court, the Antwerp municipal court, the Great Council of Mechlin, the Superior Court (Grote Raad) of the Low Countries and notarial archives.Footnote 9 Although available sources are, indeed, somewhat skewed towards Castilian merchants, the evidence clearly points towards their enduring influence on the normative practice of both GA and other Averages in the Southern Low Countries.

Averages in the Low Countries: Types and Varieties

In the sixteenth-century Low Countries, merchants had various opportunities to deal with risks and costs within the interest community that underlay a maritime venture (see Fig. 1 and Table 1).Footnote 10 First, merchants could deal with risks, the anticipated, foreseeable hazards that could befall a maritime venture.Footnote 11 They could do so by transferring risk to a third party via insurance before the venture on an individual basis, or by sharing the damages after a voyage by means of GA.Footnote 12 Antwerp also allowed merchants to recover GA losses from insurers from the 1540s onwards.Footnote 13 Another option was that a loss fell to the merchant himself, in which there was Particular Average (PA), which simply denoted damages borne by the interested party itself, a distinction with GA made particularly for insurers as they had to distinguish between the two to determine their contribution to damages, clarifying liability.Footnote 14

Fig. 1
A flow chart of maritime trade divides into risk and cost management. Risk management has Ex ante and Ex post with 3 divisions. Cost management has non-contractual and contractual Ex-ante with 4 divisions.

Varieties of Averages in the Low Countries (fifteenth–sixteenth centuries)

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Table 1 Definitions of varieties of Averages in the Low Countries (sixteenth century)
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Second, there were various cost management tools, which in the Low Countries itself often took the form of a contractual obligation for merchants to contribute pro rata to the operational costs of the venture, such as ordinary pilotage and port duties, to be paid upon safe arrival as the costs could vary.Footnote 15 The Castilian and Biscayer merchants in the Low Countries also developed two cost management tools, the so-called avería de nación and the avería(s), both non-contractual compulsory contributions for maritime protection costs, which in turn also lowered risk.Footnote 16 The former also covered the common costs of the natio such as political representation costs and devotional expenses, whilst the latter was specifically established for the Bruges-Low Countries trade. It is important note that this differed from the other Southern European nationes such as the Genoese, who did levy a compulsory contribution for common expenses but not for maritime protection costs, a distinction that has not yet been made in the sparse literature.Footnote 17

General Average in the Low Countries and Castilian Normative Practice

Both the legal development and mercantile use of GA and other varieties of Averages accelerated during the sixteenth century. Based on the sources, it may come as no surprise that GA has attracted most attention, as most sources of law (e.g. royal legislation and Antwerp municipal law) dealt primarily with it. Roman law and medieval compilations of maritime law, such as the Rôles d’Oléron (c. 1220), primarily contained jettison and mast cutting as the causes for a GA contribution. Edda Frankot has already concluded that local customs regarding GA varied significantly in the North Sea area, for example, regarding the liability of the shipmaster.Footnote 18 The principle behind GA was known from a limited number of sources, primarily Roman law and medieval compilations such as the Rôles d’Oléron, various Italian municipal laws and the Valencian-Barcelonan Consolat de Mar (c. 1435).Footnote 19 A fourteenth-century Dutch translation of the Rôles used in Bruges was known as the Vonnisse van Damme, although different translations existed throughout the Low Countries.Footnote 20 In the northern Low Countries, the so-called Ordonnantie was published in the early fifteenth century to regulate maritime trade in the Zuiderzee area around Amsterdam, concerning some new rules including extraordinary pilotage as a cause for GA.Footnote 21 In the sixteenth-century Low Countries, a combination of the Vonnisse, the Ordonnantie and Lübeck municipal law known as the Wisby Laws, compiled by Hanseatic merchants in the Low Countries, became especially influential as the ‘customary’ maritime law of the region.Footnote 22 The most important development in these new compilations was that some costs to prevent greater damages were included as a cause for a GA contribution (e.g. extraordinary pilotage or voluntarily running aground, known as strangen), rather than only direct damages.Footnote 23

In the sixteenth-century Low Countries, various influences and traditions on GA incentivised its development.Footnote 24 Since various sources of legal norms (e.g. customs, compilations of maritime law, municipal law and royal legislation) overlapped and existed next to each other, this was not necessarily a smooth process. Indeed, this legal-pluralistic nature of legal norms initiated lengthy negotiations and full-scale harmonisation was never attained. Yet the central government was remarkably successful in synthesising existing normative frameworks into a set of rules on GA during this period.Footnote 25 Whereas the medieval compilations primarily included rules of thumb (e.g. ‘jettison leads to a GA contribution’), Charles V’s 1551 Ordonnance and Antwerp municipal law, particularly its Compilatae of 1608, provided proper definitions of the instrument, providing legal security.Footnote 26 Moreover, the increased use of insurance also needed to be reflected in formal law, especially as Southern European financiers dominated the insurance industry in Antwerp around 1550.Footnote 27

GA played a major role in larger questions over the protection of the important Iberian-Low Countries trade, and hence also concerned the other Iberian merchant communities. Around 1550, threats from French and Scottish pirates obliged the Habsburg ruler Charles V to act. He issued two Ordonnances on the subject in 1550 and 1551.Footnote 28 Charles V and his civil servant Cornelis de Schepper preferred better-equipped ships to insurance to combat pirate attacks, seeing insurance as a speculative tool that did nothing to protect ships. De Schepper made various proposals to that goal, such as obligatory artillery and a tax to pay for convoy ships.Footnote 29 The 1551 Ordonnance was the first time GA (groote avarye) was actually defined. Article 41 of the Ordonnance stated that GA could be declared when damages were incurred to save ship and cargo, shared by means of the ‘customs of the sea’ (costuymen vander zee).Footnote 30 SA (gemeyne avarye) was also defined in this Ordonnance as the common operational expenses associated with the venture.Footnote 31 Relentless lobbying by Castilian and Portuguese merchants, who preferred the use of insurance and GA as a solution over forced taxes, led to the inclusion of costs associated with fighting off pirate attacks in GA, for example costs associated with fighting off pirates were allowed in GA, such as the costs for treating a wounded seaman.Footnote 32 Since Roman law already allowed ransoms paid to pirates to save the voyage as a cause for a contribution by all merchants involved in the venture, this made it easier for the central government to accept this premise.Footnote 33 Moreover, the costs arising from pirate attacks were not insurable under the 1551 Ordonnance, making GA an attractive option for the central government to deal with the risks.

Charles V’s son Philip II elaborated on the 1551 Ordonnance by promulgating the 1563 Ordonnance, which regulated all aspects of maritime law including GA and insurance. It stated that GA could be primarily declared after one of the following three acts: jettison (werpen), cutting mast and/or ropes (kerven) or voluntarily running aground (strangen), although it contained multiple additional acts such as extraordinary pilotage, similar to the medieval compilations such as the Amsterdam Ordonnantie.Footnote 34 Quintin Weytsen’s 1564 legal treatise, which acted as an intellectual justification for the 1563 Ordonnance, stated the same.Footnote 35 This all followed common local practice, as did other rules, for example, on the negligence of the shipmaster. Building on the 1551 Ordonnance, it allowed expenses for the funeral of a dead sailor fighting off pirates, and the remainder of his wages to be paid to his widow under GA.Footnote 36 Weytsen even stated that voluntary payments or partial losses to pirates after negotiations (i.e. to diminish greater losses) could be brought into GA.Footnote 37 Again, piracy played a major role in this Ordonnance. In sixteenth-century Antwerp, it was generally possible to insure against cargo losses by pirate attacks, a development the central government unsuccessfully resisted.Footnote 38

Given the ‘composite monarchy’ of the Habsburgs, it may be no surprise that some of these developments were inspired by Castilian legislation or normative practice.Footnote 39 Even whilst the 1563 Ordonnance did not state anything about the liability of insurers to pay for GA claims, Castilian merchants pushed for the acceptance of this principle in the Low Countries. Following their successful lobbying activities regarding the 1550 and 1551 Ordonnances, the Castilian natio published a collection of rules on Castilian insurance and GA customs, the so-called Hordenanzas (1569). It was published in the wake of the 1569 Ordonnance of Philip II and his representative the Duke of Alva which prohibited insurance.Footnote 40 Charles Verlinden, who published a transcription of the French and Castilian versions, accepted the claim made in the Hordenanzas that it followed the customs of the Antwerp and London stock exchanges, but this claim has been sharply disputed by more recent works.Footnote 41 For example, Guido Rossi has pointed to its strong similarities with the 1538 insurance Ordonnance of the Burgos Consulado, as well as legislation for the Seville Casa de la Contratación from 1556 and the 1560 Ordonnance of the Bilbao Consulado.Footnote 42

The argument that these ‘customs’ originated at the Antwerp bourse was most likely an effort to gain legitimacy rather than the actual truth. Yet the Hordenanzas proved very influential in the Low Countries, for example, in Antwerp municipal law. On the subject of GA, the major contribution of the Hordenanzas was to acknowledge the liability of insurers to pay for jettisoned, insured cargo.Footnote 43 This was both the case when an insured good was jettisoned and the insurer had to pay for the remainder of the damage after the merchant was reimbursed by the others in the interest community by means of GA, and when insured cargo was used to determine the GA contribution towards another persons’ loss.Footnote 44 Antwerp legal practice already accepted this principle in the late 1540s.Footnote 45 It is likely that given the Castilian influence in Antwerp this idea was drawn from Castilian normative practice, although we cannot rule out Italian influences either, as in most medieval Italian city-states insurers were also held liable for GA claims.Footnote 46

Antwerp published four versions of the so-called Costuymen (compilations of municipal customs) during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century (1548, 1570, 1582 and 1608).Footnote 47 The latter two are regarded as important legal milestones, with the 1608 Compilatae containing some 500 articles on maritime law, including on GA. The 1608 Compilatae followed the 1563 Ordonnance on most matters regarding GA, including the costs for fighting off pirates as a cause for contribution; on the liability of the insurer for GA claims, it closely resembled the Hordenanzas.Footnote 48 It also contained new rules, however, for example, the tripartite distinction between GA, SA and PA.Footnote 49 PA was, following the growing importance of insurers in sixteenth-century Antwerp, introduced to clarify the liability of insurers when damages befell a venture.Footnote 50 In the Compilatae, cargo given up in negotiations with pirates could be cause for a contribution, echoing Weytsen.Footnote 51

As a result, the Compilatae should be considered as a culmination of developments that took place in the sixteenth-century Low Countries, offering an expansive view of what GA constituted. A significant number of these innovations were inspired by Castilian (and broader Iberian) normative practice, differing in one important respect: the liability of the shipmaster. In the Low Countries, the trends bent towards a strict liability of the shipmaster, which could for example be observed in the 1563 Ordonnance.Footnote 52 The Antwerp Compilatae of 1608 contained similar clauses, for example, noting that merchants could choose how a shipmaster had to contribute to the GA declaration (via his freight, the most common option, or via the value of the ship, in case he owned the ship).Footnote 53 In Castile, the liability of the master was looser since the master could choose how he should contribute to GA.Footnote 54 This was a clause already found in the Consolat de Mar.Footnote 55

Evidence from legal practice and notarial records confirms that Castilian normative practice was already influential in Antwerp mercantile practice often long before a formal source of law incorporated the rule. The most important example was the insurability of GA contributions, which was, as noted above, drawn from Castilian legislation such as the 1538 Burgos Ordonnance. Evidence for example comes from the ledgers of the Antwerp-based Castilian insurer Juan Henriquez from 1562 to 1563. Henriquez set aside some 15% of premiums paid to him to pay for GA claims (see Table 2).Footnote 56 As Henriquez was the largest insurer in Antwerp, this was likely representative for the insurance business as a whole.Footnote 57

Table 2 GA contributions paid by Juan Henriquez (1562–1563)
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Moreover, both the Castilian consular court and the Antwerp municipal court in the 1540s and 1550s already accepted the liability for insurers to cover GA claims. One case from the Castilian consular court, dating from 1556, for example, concerned a ship coming from Portugalete (Biscay). The shipmaster jettisoned salt whilst also incurring damages to the ship.Footnote 58 GA was declared after a request by the shipmaster, who filed two cases. In the first case, he made sure that the insurers of cargo and ship would pay for the damages, before filing the actual GA claim with the consuls. This ensured no one could opt out of the contribution.

In Antwerp, twenty-five out of the forty GA cases heard between 1545 and 1582 dealt with insurers unwilling to pay for GA claims or requests to force an insurer to pay.Footnote 59 No single insurer won a case, suggesting acceptance by the Antwerp municipal court on the matter. One 1567 case gives a clear view on the matter, dealing with a pirate attack and its fall-out for insurers.Footnote 60 A Portuguese ship sailing from Antwerp to Lisbon was heavily damaged in a pirate attack before the coast of France, losing all cargo. The pirates also forced the master to set sail to an unnamed French port, where they released master and crew. The master immediately abandoned the ship to the insurer, meaning the ship was now the insurer’s property (although still in the hands of the pirates).Footnote 61 Some of the cargo had been lost due to a jettison act by the master, which according to him had been an attempt to sail faster and escape the pirates. Hence, he filed for GA for this lost cargo, with the support of the merchants involved in the venture. Although the insurers agreed with the act of abandonment, they were unwilling to pay for the GA claim as well, citing the failure of the attempt: and strictly speaking, they were right. Yet the court agreed with the shipmaster and the merchants, citing the need for an equitable solution for which the insurers were held to contribute: moreover, the act of jettison was separate from the abandonment.

The Spanish Compulsory Contributions and the Issue of Protection Costs

Spanish non-contractual, ex ante compulsory contributions have primarily received attention in the framework of the New World trade, as the role of the so-called avería has attracted the attention of historians in Spain and abroad.Footnote 62 Yet before the 1521 establishment of the avería, in the Low Countries both the Castilian and the Biscayer nationes already used two compulsory contributions as cost management tools to cover protection costs, primarily artillery and convoy ships. Protection costs, in the definition of Frederic Lane, are the costs used to protect a monopolistic trade, so that so-called protection rents could flow from the initial investment in protection.Footnote 63 One of the two varieties in the Low Countries was the avería de nación, which flowed from the privileges the Castilian and Biscayer nationes received. It was an annual contribution paid by the members to cover both ordinary expenses (e.g. legal fees) and maritime protection costs (artillery and convoy ships).

The present literature has often conflated the avería de nación with the compulsory contributions of other Southern European nationes, such as the Portuguese direito da nação and the Genoese massaria, lumping them all together under the name droit d’avarie (‘right of average’).Footnote 64 Yet a close reading of the privileges shows that only the Castilian and Biscayers used their annual contribution for maritime protection costs besides ordinary expenses.Footnote 65 Even the Catalan-Aragonese natio did not use the annual contribution for maritime protection costs.Footnote 66

The Spanish anomaly is explained by the particular nature of the Spanish wool trade with the Low Countries. The merchant guilds, the so-called Consulados, were in charge of equipping the fleets for the outward journey to transport wool to the Low Countries.Footnote 67 The nationes were, at least formally, satellites of these Consulados: the Castilian natio of the Burgos Consulado, the Biscayers of the Bilbao Consulado, and hence responsible for the return journeys.Footnote 68 The two non-contractual compulsory contributions were levied before a voyage and used to pay for the protection costs for the ship(s), primarily artillery and convoy ships as this was obligated by the Castilian Crown. The avería de nación was of course primarily used for ordinary expenses of the natio, with only a small portion used for the maritime protection costs. Next to the avería de nación, another contribution very similar to the Seville avería and also called the avería(s), was established in the wake of the promulgation of the 1551 Ordonnance to cover the maritime protection costs for the Spain-Low Countries route.Footnote 69 Material about the avería(s) is extremely scant, as there only few records dealing specifically with this variety.Footnote 70

Luckily, much more archival material is available about the avería de nación, as it was a privilege granted by various authorities (e.g. the municipality of Bruges, the Burgundian sovereign and the sovereign of the home region) to the natio and hence recorded by various parties in archives. Moreover, there was plenty of litigation before the Bruges municipal court and the Great Council, the superior court of the Low Countries, offering a clear view on the practical problems that arose. Although the principle was rather straightforward, questions arose during the fifteenth century in Bruges about joint ventures with merchant of other nationes. If Genoese merchants used Castilian-owned ships to transport their cargo, could the Castilian consuls levy the avería de nación on them to contribute to the maritime protection costs? In fifteenth-century Bruges, the answer was generally yes, as litigation from 1472 and 1482 for example shows.Footnote 71 Interestingly, this was only the case when Italian merchants (e.g. Genoese or Florentines) were involved, but not when other Spanish merchants (e.g. Catalan-Aragonese) were involved.Footnote 72

We will focus here on one specific litigation process on the avería de nación which is especially rich in detail. The case was initiated by the consuls of the Biscayer natio in Bruges in 1511 and, as a first instance case, again in 1515 at the Great Council.Footnote 73 Since the records contain all the arguments on the avería de nación, it offers us a unique insight into the contemporary arguments on the compulsory contribution. The Castilians were active participants in this process as they started concurrent litigation in Antwerp and before the Great Council, again underlining their important role in the development of Averages in the Low Countries. Merchants rarely went to regional or central superior courts for commercial cases owing to their slow proceedings and high costs.Footnote 74 The avería de nación was however different, since the nationes went to great lengths to preserve their privileges.Footnote 75 At the Great Council, foreign merchants were privileged litigants.Footnote 76 Moreover, the court had jurisdiction over cases of maritime transport, including GA and by extension also other Averages.Footnote 77

In 1511, the Biscayer consuls initiated a case before the Bruges municipal court against three Genoese and one Florentine merchant.Footnote 78 Concurrently, various Castilian merchants, backed by their consuls, started litigation at the Antwerp municipal court.Footnote 79 Both cases dealt with the question of whether the Italian merchants were liable to pay the avería de nación to one of the Spanish nationes when using the latter’s ships. In Bruges, the Biscayer consuls won the case, allowing them to levy the compulsory contribution. The Antwerp municipal court, ruling against the Castilian merchants acting as proxies of the Biscayers and Castilians, in contrast decided that since the Genoese were de facto based in Antwerp since 1509, the litigation started in Bruges did not concern them on jurisdictional grounds. The Bruges municipal court was hence unable to enforce its ruling owing to those very same jurisdictional problems, even if it could refer to precedents on the same subject matter. Because several Genoese merchants were still based in Bruges and the natio itself was based there de jure as well, the Genoese consuls filed an appeal against the Bruges ruling at the Great Council to absolve them of liability, supported by the consuls of Lucca, Florence and Venice, as the latter were also impacted. The Great Council decided to hear the case as a first instance case, since the case posed significant jurisdictional problems.Footnote 80 Whilst the case centred on the payment of individual merchants, the Great Council allowed the Biscayer consuls to file the case against the Genoese consuls to decide on the principle. At the same time, the Castilian consuls launched a separate case on the same subject to guarantee this privilege against the decision by the Antwerp municipal court, which the Great Council also decided to hear as a first instance case.Footnote 81

The lengthy arguments written down by the two parties are invaluable in informing us about the nature of the avería de nación. The Biscayers presented the differences between three variations of maritime Averages in their arguments. They explained that there were three varieties of maritime Averages: GA plus SA (grosse et commune avarie); PA (petite); and the compulsory contribution of the natio (denier de nation).Footnote 82 Whilst this distinction is fairly close to the divisions presented in Table 1, no distinction was yet made between risk and cost management structures. The Biscayers explained that the avería de nación was primarily used for the maintenance of the chapel of the natio, but also for maritime protection costs such as convoy ships.Footnote 83 They argued that since the protection measures benefited everyone, it was fair to expect those using their ships for transport to pay the compulsory contribution.Footnote 84 As evidence, they cited a number of precedents: the 1368 privileges of the Castilians, ‘ancient usages and customs’,Footnote 85 an arbitrational sentence of 1454 admitting this principle as reciprocal, several court records from 1458, 1471, 1481, 1482 and 1490,Footnote 86 a 1492 agreement between the Spanish and Italian nationes on the subjectFootnote 87 and their latest privileges of 1494.Footnote 88 In the concurrent case launched by the Castilians, their consuls explicitly referred to precedents from the Bruges municipal court and the fact that the Biscayers won their case in Bruges.Footnote 89 Moreover, the Castilians argued that both the municipal law of Bruges and the aldermen of Middelburg (Zeeland) had accepted the principle that Italian merchants had to contribute to the avería de nación as they profited from the protection arrangements.Footnote 90 In both cases, the Genoese argued that the compulsory contribution could be levied on individual merchants in exceptional cases, but that the cited cases did not constitute a precedent.Footnote 91 In the case launched by the Castilians, the Genoese also argued that the decision of the Bruges municipal court unduly infringed on the freedom of the natio and their members.Footnote 92

The Biscayers, in a lengthy answer, elaborated upon the legal basis of the avería de nación. They argued that they did not seek control over individual Genoese merchants, but that the freight contract signed by a Biscayer shipmaster constituted the legal basis to levy the avería de nación.Footnote 93 Given the fact that individual Genoese merchants had consented to the voyage by means of the freight contract, they also by implication agreed to contribute to the mutual protection costs as a contractual obligation.Footnote 94 According to the Biscayer consuls, the Bruges municipal court precedents showed that this was enough to consider the compulsory contribution binding for the Genoese merchants, citing the 1472 and 1482 decisions.Footnote 95 The Great Council decided in both cases that the Genoese had to pay for the avería de nación, although it acquitted the Florentine merchant in the first case for he was only a junior partner in the case, having commissioned the Genoese merchants to act on his behalf.Footnote 96 In the second case, the Great Council, decided that the Genoese had to pay for the avería de nación of the Castilians as well in future cases, referring to the 1492 agreement (which has unfortunately not survived) and the precedents from Bruges. However, the Florentine, Venetian and Lucchese nationes were absolved from paying the compulsory contribution for unknown reasons.Footnote 97

Although the Biscayers won the first instance case, a true legal thriller followed the verdicts of the Great Council of 1515. Among other things, the Genoese filed a petition with the Secret Council in 1515 to annul the verdicts of the Great Council. In 1518, the Secret Council, an advice council to the sovereign which could hear petitions against Great Council decisions,Footnote 98 filed an ‘advice’ ordering the Great Council to rehear the case, which only happened in 1524 and 1525.Footnote 99 Although the Great Council subsequently ruled in favour of the Biscayers on multiple occasions, the Genoese were still litigating on technicalities during the 1540s.Footnote 100 Legal practice in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries offered an expansive view of the avería de nación, allowing two ‘Spanish’ nationes to levy the compulsory contribution on Italian merchants using their ships for cargo transport. The case studied here shows the importance attached by the Spanish and Italian nationes on the subject, putting the issue of protection costs at the core of the development of Averages in the Spanish case. Although no new litigation can be found after the 1530s, the avería de nación was clearly of great importance for the two Spanish nationes between roughly 1460 and 1550. Again, the Castilians (and Biscayers) were instrumental in pushing the limits of the instrument and influencing its normative development.

Conclusion

The development of GA in the sixteenth-century Low Countries was to a substantial extent inspired by Castilian normative practice or incentivised by the lobbying activities of Iberian merchants. Uninsurable costs arising from pirate attacks originated in Castilian normative practice, and the liability of insurers to pay for GA claims was also likely drawn from Castilian practice, as evidenced (for example) by the records of the Castilian Antwerp-based insurer Juan Henriquez. From around 1550 onwards, formal sources of law, such as the Habsburg Ordonnances, Weytsen’s treatise, the Hordenanzas and Antwerp municipal law incorporated these developments into written sources of law. Given that Castile and the Low Countries shared a ruler up to 1581 (and much longer in the case of the Southern Netherlands), it should not be exactly surprising that the Castilian normative framework was so influential in the sixteenth-century Low Countries. Castilian merchants moreover developed two non-contractual, ex ante compulsory contributions to the Low Countries, the avería de naçion and the avería(s), to cover maritime protection costs such as artillery and convoy ships which in turn also lowered risk. The Castilian and Biscayer nationes actively litigated to safeguard the avería de naçion privilege, showing the importance of Averages in creating protection rents. The influence of Castilian normative practice on GA and other forms of Averages was therefore of great significance in the Southern Low Countries during the sixteenth century, marking the long-lasting impact of the Castilian trade with the Low Countries in both formal law and mercantile practice.