Commerce, Citizenship, and Identity in Legal History

Institutions, Trade, and Growth: The Ancient Greek Case of Proxenia

“…However, alien guilds were closed clubs that worked only for their members and were mostly concerned with commercial matters, whereas proxeny offered more unconditional and broader support to all citizens of the granting polis and did not rely on small-scale commercial diaspora, but rather on befriending influential locals. Lastly, while providing visitors with clearer rules and timely settlements, German "guest law" (Gästerecht) and "guest courts" (Gastgerichte) formalized the legal position of foreigners as fundamentally disadvantageous in both economic freedoms and access to contractual enforcement (Schultze 1908;De ruysscher et al 2021)-hurdles that proxenia was there to ease. The previous discussion makes it clear that there was ample room for transaction costs to be reduced, and that proxenia was well-suited to do so.…”