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.
Author(s): Laura Kolb, George Oppitz-Trotman
Series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 416
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Contributors
List of Figures
1 Introduction
1.1 Debt Connects
1.2 Economies of Obligation, Then and Now
1.3 Expanding the Horizons of Early Modern Debts
References
Part I Family, Household, Community
2 Debt and Doorways in Renaissance Comedy
2.1 Everyone Is Afraid of Giving Credit (Metuont Credere Omnes)
2.2 ‘Batti Quell’uscio’—‘Pound on This Door’ (La Lena, 4.3.999)
2.3 Doors and Debts in Ariosto’s La Lena and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors
References
3 Masters as Debtors of Their Servants in Early Modern Brandenburg and Saxony
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Uncertain Nature of Servants’ Wages
3.3 Financing the Noble Household: Daily Advances and Chains of Credit
3.4 Formal Loans
3.5 Transforming Debt into Gift
References
4 Debt Culture in Shakespeare’s Time
References
5 A Legal Remedy Against Rent Arrears: Landlords’ Privilege on Furniture in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Dealing with Unpaid Rent: A Public Order Preoccupation
5.2.1 The Rise of Urban Housing and Landlords’ Difficulties in Rent Management
5.2.2 The Tenants’ Contractual Obligations to Pay Rent and to Provide Sufficient Furniture
5.2.3 A Legal Remedy for Unpaid Landlords: The Privilege of Execution on Furniture
5.3 An Exceptional Privilege Consolidated by Customary Law
5.3.1 Historical Perspective on the Distinction between Movable and Immovable Securities for Debt
5.3.2 The Landlord’s Privilege: An Exception to the General Principles of Movable Securities for Debt
5.3.3 A Privilege Considerably Strengthened by the 1580 Reformation of the Custom of Paris
5.4 Effectiveness in Execution: A Strong Privilege Challenged by Unavoidable Difficulties
5.4.1 The Necessity of Execution Depending on Tenants’ Social Category
5.4.2 Effectiveness of the Execution in Competition with Other Creditors
5.4.3 Practical Difficulties due to Procedural or Administrative Uncertainties
5.5 Conclusion
References
Part II Debt’s Networks
6 Crafting the Hierarchy of Debts: The Example of Antwerp (Fifteenth–Sixteenth Centuries)
6.1 Introduction
6.2 The Relevance of Ranking Debts
6.3 Antwerp Rules on Debt in the Fifteenth Century
6.4 Hesitation around the Dowry and Bills Obligatory
6.5 Conclusion
References
7 Debt, Trust and Reputation in Early Modern Armenian Merchant Networks
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Trust, Credit and Trading Diasporas
7.3 Credit and Networks of Reputation
7.4 Public Discourse on Commerce, Luxury and Armenian Trading Diasporas
7.5 Legal Exemptions from Debt Repayment
7.6 Debt Collection and Church Agency
7.7 A Credit History between Poland and India: Responsibility, Surety and Solidarity
7.8 Reputation, Defamation and Moral Pressure
7.9 Conclusion
References
8 How to Deal with Obligations? Contentious Debts and the Parere of the Handelsvorstand in Early Modern Nürnberg
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Merchants and Their Obligations
8.3 Establishing Commercial Jurisdiction in Nürnberg
8.4 The Establishment and Reception of the Parere
8.5 The Parere as a Component of Commercial Jurisdiction
8.6 Narratives of Obligation
8.7 Conclusion
References
9 Capillary Obligations: Fletcher’s Island Princess and the Global Debts of the East India Company
9.1 A Company of Debtors
9.2 Carceral Debt in The Island Princess
9.3 Capillary Obligations
References
Part III The Language and Logic of Debt
10 Hypallactic Debt Management: The Rhetoric of Exchange in Wyatt and Shakespeare
10.1 Debt, Grief and Incoherence in Wyatt’s ‘The piller pearisht’
10.2 Misgivings and Mistakings in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 87
10.3 Debt, Hypallage and the Double-Take in Cymbeline, King of Britain
10.4 The Winter’s Tale: Consideration and the Hypallactic Changeling
References
11 Caroline Debt: Shakespeare to Shirley
References
12 Debt Letters: Epistolary Economies in Early Modern England
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Business Letters and Familiar Letters
12.3 Entertainment and Utility
12.4 Conclusion: Beyond Manuals
References
13 Debt and Paradox in the Early Modern Period
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Is It Good to Be in Debt?
13.3 Can a Borrower Bind Herself?
13.4 Is Usury Justified?
13.5 Conclusion
References
Part IV The Indebted Self
14 Self-Love and the Transformation of Obligation to Self-Control in Early Modern British Society
References
Index
