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.

Autorentext

Laura Kolb is Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College CUNY, USA. She is the author of Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare (2021).

George Oppitz-Trotman is the author of The Origins of English Revenge Tragedy (2019) and Stages of Loss. The English Comedians and their Reception (2020).

Klappentext

Early Modern Debts: 15501700 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.

Inhalt

1. Chapter 1: Introduction Laura Kolb and George Oppitz-Trotman

1.1 Debt Connects

1.2 Economies of Obligation, Then and Now****

1.3 Expanding the Horizons of Early Modern Debts

Part One: Family, household, community

2. Chapter 2: Debt and Doorways Lorna Hutson

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

3. Chapter 3: Masters as Debtors of their Servants in Early Modern Brandenburg and Saxony Sebastian Kühn

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 Credits

3.5 Transforming Debt into Gift

4. Chapter 4: Debt Culture in Shakespeare's Time Lena Cowen Orlin

5. Chapter 5: A legal remedy against rent arrears: Landlords' privilege on furniture in 16th- and 17th-century France Nga Bellis-Phan

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Dealing with unpaid rent: a public order preoccupation

5.3 An exceptional privilege consolidated by customary law

5.4 Effectiveness in execution: a strong privilege challenged by unavoidable difficulties

5.5 Conclusion

Part Two: Debt's Networks

6. Chapter 6: Crafting the Hierarchy of Debts: The Example of Antwerp (15th-16th Centuries) Dave De ruysscher

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The Relevance of Ranking Debts

6.3 Antwerp Rules on Debt in the Fifteenth Century

6.4 Hesitations on the Dowry and Bills Obligatory

6.5 Conclusion

7. Chapter 7: Debt, Trust and Reputation in Early Modern Armenian Merchant Networks Alexandr Osipian

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 Exceptions from Debt Repayment

7.6 Debt Collection and the 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

8. Chapter 8: How to Deal with Obligations? Contentious Debts and the Parere of the Handelsvorstand in Early Modern Nürnberg Christof Jeggle

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Merchants and their Obligations

8.3 Establishing Commercial Jurisdiction in Nürnberg

8.4 Establishing the Parere as an Element of Commercial Jurisdiction and their Reception

8.5 The Parere as a Component of Commercial Jurisdiction

8.6 Narratives of Obligation

8.7 Conclusion

9. Chapter 9: Capillary Obligations: Fletcher's Island Princess and the Global Debts of the East India Company Benjamin D. VanWagoner

9.1 A Company of Debtors

9.2 Carceral Debt in The Island Princess

9.3 Capillary Obligations

Part Three: The Language and Logic of Debt 10. Chapter 10: Hypallactic Debt Management: The ...