ROADS, WAGONS AND CARRIERS - Transport, Mobility and Economic Organisation in Goslar and the Harz, 1600–1700

Seventeenth-century Goslar depended on mobility without possessing a single, comprehensive transport system. People travelled on foot, on horseback and occasionally by wagon, while the surrounding mining district required the regular movement of ore, slag, charcoal, wood and other materials. The surviving evidence, however, is uneven: freight traffic generated ordinances, disputes and accounts, whereas ordinary passenger journeys often went unrecorded. This article examines transport as a point of contact between mining technology, rural household economies, territorial regulation and the legal autonomy of the imperial city. Drawing principally on Hans-Joachim Kraschewski’s archival study of Harz carrying services, and on independently verified catalogue descriptions in the Lower Saxony State Archives, it distinguishes what can be demonstrated from the seventeenth-century documentation from what remains a plausible reconstruction. The regulations of 1649, 1660, 1669 and 1677, conflicts among carriers, the administrative use of freight permits, and disputes over road maintenance reveal neither an unregulated market nor a simple system of compulsory labour. Rather, transport obligations, remunerated services, privileges and official supervision coexisted and were repeatedly renegotiated. A final section considers the limits of reconstructing the journeys of Goslar’s executioners, notably Caspar Kruse III. The article offers an integrated interpretation and a programme for primary-source collation; it does not claim to be a diplomatic edition of the original archival records.