At the present moment, when some economic historians (e.g. Peter Temin) estimate the market efficiency by the degree of activity of market-intermediaries, it seems necessary to wonder about the permanency of this "actor" in the economy. Since the first waves of economic globalization up to the traders’ desks of the XXth century, the perspective this workshop intends to address is to focus on the role of intermediaries in the long run in Western Europe.
Nowadays, following the rise of financial markets, economics has got a grip on the word "intermediation" and ended up assigning a very limited meaning to it, that of financial intermediation. A quick search in university libraries catalogues confirms this impression: the search results in an overwhelming number of titles related to financial economy, market economy and banking systems. Such works, though useful, give us only a partial insight into the multiplicity of forms that intermediation takes and may take in a long term (be it from a cultural, economic or political point of view).
Emphasis has been laid on economy for this workshop. But as such, we wish also to recast intermediation in a much broader scope: we view it as a phenomenon of social interactions, which does not reduce itself to the financial world but, on the contrary, expresses itself in an extended range of activities – whether formal or informal – in the labour relations.
Be it in the secondary sector or in the tertiary sector, a whole range of intermediaries has progressively influenced the nature and growth of economic relations.
Obviously, this phenomenon is particularly acute in the environment linked to the money markets. Suffice it to mention the researches about the bankers and moneychangers of roman antiquity (Jean Andreau and Alexis d’Hautcourt) and about the present world of the stock exchange brokers (O. Godechot and N. Guilhot). The number of publications related to this topic, in connection with the genesis of capitalist-type institutions, has grown steadily (see particularly A. Greif).
With regard to the medieval period, recent researches from James Murray and Anke Greve, working on the connections between brokers-hostellers and moneychangers in Bruges have shed light, far beyond the mere role of housing foreign merchants, on the dynamic role of intermediaries in developing efficient banking techniques. More generally speaking, illegal brokerage coexisted with professional guilds regulating the profession of commercial intermediary during the Middle Ages. The profession of broker differed in its regulation from one town to another, taking into account its location into an urban network connected to the international trade, it depended closely on its economic function.
Likewise, the emergence of an information market (Venice in the XVIIth C., M. Infelise) involves mechanisms of intermediation as a means to enhance the circulation and diffusion of news within networks of merchants. The issue referring to the influence of intermediation in the elaboration of reliable information for buyers and sellers is obviously central in the current scholarship. For instance, a recent book dealing with the advent of the Amsterdam stock exchange in the XVIIth C. (C. Lesger) considers this marketplace to be a very efficient centre for information exchange on international assets and values. In this case, a real armada of brokers, either under oath or not, has notably contributed to the development of the first commercial gazettes.
On the other hand – and this has already been stressed –, the process of intermediation should not be reduced to its mere application in the financial spheres. It has rapidly gained pace in other sectors of the pre-industrial economic activity, e.g. drapery, dyestuff investments, grains commercialisation, and the search for a seasonal workforce in agriculture, all sectors which remain to be fully explored.
The XIXth and XXth C. have witnessed the unprecedented expansion of the forms of intermediation. Let us merely mention the professionalization of economic practices linked to consulting, insurance, advertising, and temporary work activities. If new professional functions have appeared in the banking sector as a sequel of a long tradition, other economic sectors – like volume retailing trade, in expansion from the mid-XIXth C. onwards – attract a large array of intermediaries. The huge development of a service industry throughout the XXth C. seems to have increased the importance of intermediaries in labour relations, including in the field of ‘human resources’ management.
These few examples do not aim to give an unabridged account on the forms and practices of intermediation. They intend, more precisely, to illustrate the variety of expressions taken by the activities of intermediation, as well as to question the extent of influence exerted by intermediaries in the long run of social and economic relations.

Topics suggested for papers:

Topics of interest include – but are not limited to – the following suggestions:
1) Methodology and definition of intermediary and intermediation: prosopography, case studies, methods of analysis,…
2) Modes, models and forms of organization: regulation or absence of organizational rules in brokerage,…
3) Space and time: loci, settings, and vectors of action (at the local, regional or international scale) in a historical perspective

Length of presentation: 20 minutes
Working languages: English and French

This Conference is part of the research project “Labour Relations and Labour Markets in Western Europe, 1500-2000” funded by the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO).
Arrangements are being made by the local organizers to take in charge travel and accommodation fees.

Main deadlines:

Submission of abstracts (max. 300 words): September 1, 2008

Signification of acceptance: September 15, 2008