Early Modern Debts

Early Modern Debts
Author: Laura Kolb
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2020-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030597695

Early Modern Debts: 1550–1700 makes an important contribution to the history of debt and credit in Europe, creating new transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives on problems of debt, credit, trust, interest, and investment in early modern societies. The collection includes essays by leading international scholars and early career researchers in the fields of economic and social history, legal history, literary criticism, and philosophy on such subjects as trust and belief; risk; institutional history; colonialism; personhood; interiority; rhetorical invention; amicable language; ethnicity and credit; household economics; service; and the history of comedy. Across the collection, the book reveals debt’s ubiquity in life and literature. It considers debt’s function as a tie between the individual and the larger group and the ways in which debts structured the home, urban life, legal systems, and linguistic and literary forms.

Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England

Credit and Debt in Eighteenth-Century England
Author: Alexander Wakelam
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0429647921

Throughout the eighteenth century hundreds of thousands of men and women were cast into prison for failing to pay their debts. This apparently illogical system where debtors were kept away from their places of work remained popular with creditors into the nineteenth century even as Britain witnessed industrialisation, market growth, and the increasing sophistication of commerce, as the debtors’ prisons proved surprisingly effective. Due to insufficient early modern currency, almost every exchange was reliant upon the use of credit based upon personal reputation rather than defined collateral, making the lives of traders inherently precarious as they struggled to extract payments based on little more than promises. This book shows how traders turned to debtors’ prisons to give those promises defined consequences, the system functioning as a tool of coercive contract enforcement rather than oppression of the poor. Credit and Debt demonstrates for the first time the fundamental contribution of debt imprisonment to the early modern economy and reveals how traders made use of existing institutions to alleviate the instabilities of commerce in the context of unprecedented market growth. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in economic history and early modern British history.

The Economy of Obligation

The Economy of Obligation
Author: C. Muldrew
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2016-07-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1349268798

This book is an excellent work of scholarship. It seeks to redefine the early modern English economy by rejecting the concept of capitalism, and instead explores the cultural meaning of credit, resulting from the way in which it was economically structured. It is a major argument of the book that money was used only in a limited number of exchanges, and that credit in terms of household reputation, was a 'cultural currency' of trust used to transact most business. As the market expanded in the late-sixteenth century such trust became harder to maintain, leading to an explosion of debt litigation, which in turn resulted in social relations being partially redefined in terms of contractual equality.

Credit and Debt in Medieval England c.1180-c.1350

Credit and Debt in Medieval England c.1180-c.1350
Author: Phillipp Schofield
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2002-08-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785704044

The essays in this volume look at the mechanics of debt, the legal process, and its economics in early medieval England. Beneath the elevated plane of high politics, affairs of the Crown and international finance of the Middle Ages, lurked huge numbers of credit and debt transactions. The transactions and those who conducted them moved between social and economic worlds; merchants and traders, clerics and Jews, extending and receiving credit to and from their social superiors, equals and inferiors. These papers build upon an established tradition of approaches to the study of credit and debt in the Middle Ages, looking at the wealth of historical material, from registries of debt and legal records, to parliamentary roles and statues, merchant accounts, rents and leases, wills and probates. Four of the six papers in this volume were given at a conference on 'Credit and debt in medieval and early modern England' held in Oxford in 2000. The other two papers draw upon new important postgraduate theses. Contents: Introduction (Phillipp Schofield) ; Aspects of the law of debt, 1189-1307 (Paul Brand) ; Christian and Jewish lending patterns and financial dealings during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Robin R. Mundill) ; Some aspects of the business of statutory debt registries, 1283-1307 (Christopher McNall) ; The English parochial clergy as investors and creditors in the first half of the fourteenth century (Pamela Nightingale) ; Access to credit in the medieval English countryside (Phillipp Schofield) ; Creditors and debtors at Oakington, Cottenham and Dry Drayton (Cambridgeshire), 1291-1350 (Chris Briggs) .

Debt

Debt
Author: David Graeber
Publisher: Melville House
Total Pages: 709
Release: 2014-12-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1612194206

Now in paperback, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Buying and Selling

Buying and Selling
Author: Shanti Graheli
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2019-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004340394

Buying and Selling explores the many facets of the business of books across and beyond Europe, adopting the viewpoints of printers, publishers, booksellers, and readers. Essays by twenty-five scholars from a range of disciplines seek to reconstruct the dynamics of the trade through a variety of sources. Through the combined investigation of printed output, documentary evidence, provenance research, and epistolary networks, this volume trails the evolving relationship between readers and the book trade. In the resulting picture of failure and success, balanced precariously between debt-economies, sale strategies and uncertain profit, customers stand out as the real winners.

A History of the Credit Market in Central Europe

A History of the Credit Market in Central Europe
Author: Pavla Slavíčková
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2020
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780429356018

"This is the first comprehensive study of loans and debts in Central European countries in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. It outlines the issues of debts and loans in the Czech lands, Poland and Hungary, with respect to the influence of Austria and Germany. It focuses on the role of loans and debts in medieval and early modern society, credit markets in these countries, the mechanism of lending and borrowing, forms of credit, availability of loans, frequency of credits dealings, range of lending business, and last, but not least, the financial relationships inside the social classes and between them. The research presented in the book is based on a wide range of resources including credit contracts and agreements, evidence of loans and debts of courts, accounting of nobility, towns, church and guilds, merchant diaries and Jewish registers, as well as other financial records. It covers a wide range of historical disciplines including economic and financial history, social history, the history of economic thought as well as the history of everyday life. It also contains a wealth of case studies, which offer, for the first time in English, a comprehensive and representative sample of the most up-to-date Central European research on the history of loans and debts and serves as a basis for a comparison with the other parts of Europe during the same period. The book is designed primarily for postgraduates, researchers and academics in financial, economic and historical sciences but will also be a valuable resource for students of business schools"--

Taxation and Debt in the Early Modern City

Taxation and Debt in the Early Modern City
Author: Michael Limberger
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 131732241X

Fiscal relations between states and cities in early modern Europe is a major concern for economic and financial historians. This collection of eleven essays is based on new research using documentary evidence from local and national archives from across Europe.

Land and Credit

Land and Credit
Author: Chris Briggs
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2018-02-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319662090

This volume investigates the use of mortgages in the European countryside between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. A mortgage allowed a loan to be secured with land or other property, and the practice has been linked to the transformation of the agrarian economy that paved the way for modern economic growth. Historians have viewed the mortgage both positively and negatively: on the one hand, it provided borrowers with opportunities for investment in agriculture; but equally, it exposed them to the risk of losing their mortgaged property. The case studies presented in this volume reveal the variety of forms that the mortgage took, and show how an intricate balance was struck between the interests of the borrower looking for funds, and those of the lender looking for security. It is argued that the character of mortgage law, and the nature of rights in land in operation in any given the place and period, determined the degree to which mortgages were employed. Over time, developments in these factors allowed increasing numbers of peasants to use mortgages more freely, and with a decreasing risk of expropriation. This volume will be appealing to academics and researchers interested in financial history, rural credit and debt, and the economic history of agrarian communities.