Early Modern Debts

Early Modern Debts PDF Author: Laura Kolb
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030597695
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
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.

Early Modern Debts

Early Modern Debts PDF Author: Laura Kolb
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030597695
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 PDF Author: Alexander Wakelam
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429647921
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
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.

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

Credit and Debt in Medieval England c.1180-c.1350 PDF Author: Phillipp Schofield
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785704044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
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) .

The Economy of Obligation

The Economy of Obligation PDF Author: C. Muldrew
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349268798
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
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.

Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South'

Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South' PDF Author: Stefan Nygard
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474461425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Combining a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant divisive use of debt as staking out claims against another party, this text explores the consequences of the erasure of historical temporality in the recent period of 'globalization' and 'individualization' as well as new registers for political uses of the past under current conditions. It draws on socio-political, moral-philosophical and literary-artistic analyses, tracing the genealogy of debt through European history.

The Poverty of Disaster

The Poverty of Disaster PDF Author: Tawny Paul
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496946
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Examines debt insecurity in eighteenth-century Britain, a period of famously rapid economic growth when many people nevertheless experienced financial failure.

Buying and Selling

Buying and Selling PDF Author: Shanti Graheli
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004340394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 583

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Book Description
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.

Taxation and Debt in the Early Modern City

Taxation and Debt in the Early Modern City PDF Author: Michael Limberger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131732241X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
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 PDF Author: Chris Briggs
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319662090
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
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.

Rethinking Sovereign Debt

Rethinking Sovereign Debt PDF Author: Odette Lienau
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674726405
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Conventional wisdom holds that all nations must repay debt. Regardless of the legitimacy of the regime that signs the contract, a country that fails to honor its obligations damages its reputation. Yet should today's South Africa be responsible for apartheid-era debt? Is it reasonable to tether postwar Iraq with Saddam Hussein's excesses? Rethinking Sovereign Debt is a probing analysis of how sovereign debt continuity--the rule that nations should repay loans even after a major regime change, or else expect consequences--became dominant. Odette Lienau contends that the practice is not essential for functioning capital markets, and demonstrates its reliance on absolutist ideas that have come under fire over the last century. Lienau traces debt continuity from World War I to the present, emphasizing the role of government officials, the World Bank, and private markets in shaping our existing framework. Challenging previous accounts, she argues that Soviet Russia's repudiation of Tsarist debt and Great Britain's 1923 arbitration with Costa Rica hint at the feasibility of selective debt cancellation. Rethinking Sovereign Debt calls on scholars and policymakers to recognize political choice and historical precedent in sovereign debt and reputation, in order to move beyond an impasse when a government is overthrown.