The Italian Destiny of the French Code De Commerce

Abstract

As has been recently and most appropriately pointed out, European history is not only a history of freedom, equality and fraternity, but it is also a history of violence and conquests. More specifically, within the countries conquered by French armies during the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, it was also a history of clashes and encounters of different legal systems.

The point is in no way to juxtapose national histories, but to understand how a legal system nourishes itself from exchanges, contacts and interactions with other legal systems. This perspective includes the study of the impact of foreign laws on national trajectories.

With regard to the reception of the Code de commerce in Italy, the question has not yet received the attention it deserves and further research is needed. However, it is clear that it was a code which put commercial law under the rule of private law. Furthermore, its contents were not entirely new: it was a sort of ‘compromise’, as well as with the Code civil, and was conceived in a pre-industrial country.

The study of various aspects of attitudes toward French commercial law in different countries during the 19th century, especially those in the early stages of development in the first half of that century, such as the Italian territories, seems consistent with the praiseworthy effort toward renewal of legal history’s methods and goals.

Keywords: Commercial Law, French Code de commerce, Italy, Codification, Legal transfer, Legal Circulations