Corruptie in de Nederlanden, 1400-1800

Abstract

Corruption in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period is a challenging theme for scientific researchers. The main difficulty concerns the fact that definitions of corruption are strongly context-related. The concept of corruption differs not only per period and per community, but within a particular period the perceptions on corruption were different as well. Such complexity applies to medieval and early modern research especially, because the distinctions between 'private person' and 'public office' were much more obscure in pre-modern times. In this introduction we review various concepts and approaches on corruption that are relevant for historical research. By using different approaches, the articles of this volume show that contemporaries considered reciprocity an appropriate way of maintaining their professional associations, while at the same time the boundaries of relation maintenances were ambiguous.