At the end of the early-modern period, credit and creditworthiness were still concepts that had complex social and cultural meanings, besides their obvious economic significance. In this session we ask how the concept of credit changed, in the wake of the reformation of the bankruptcy institution that took place from ...
(Show more)At the end of the early-modern period, credit and creditworthiness were still concepts that had complex social and cultural meanings, besides their obvious economic significance. In this session we ask how the concept of credit changed, in the wake of the reformation of the bankruptcy institution that took place from the end of the eighteenth and in the beginning of the nineteenth century across western Europe and in North America. While this modernization is known in broad terms, the development is complex and far from fully understood.
Drawing inspiration from the resarch of among others Margot Finn, Laurence Fontaine, Craig Muldrew and Clare Haru Crowston, this paper outline and problematize the research problem of the session Fashion, luxury, credit and trust. Early-modern and modern bankruptcies in Europe and North America. The session focuses on how the early-modern concept of the credit market – ’credit’ (Fontaine), ’economies of regard’ (Haru Crowston) och ’the economy of obligation’ (Muldrew) – was affected by the early modernization of the preindustrial economy. How did this development happen in different parts of the world, and in different judicial traditions? To what degree did social and economic positions affect the change?
Our investigations into the situation in Stockholm, a city in economic stagnation during the period 1760 and 1850, have shown how a new modus operandi was established in the handling of bankruptices, as part of a comprehensive revamping of the existing legislation during the earlier part of this period. The new legislation changed the way in which bankruptcies were managed by the municipal authorities, leading up to a more structured and time-efficient system, where the average days from application to verdict in a bankruptcy case were substantially shortened, and where new checks and balances removed legislative ambiguities and loopholes.*
This growing efficiency can be contrasted to a continued lack of economic realism, however, a trend that for British circumstances has been shown to have continued well into the nineteenth century. How did the new credit market for example affect ideas of luxury, fashion, and consumption, concepts that were linked to social standing and the construction and assertment of rights for various groups in society, but most importantly a type of extravagance that was intimately connected to the existence of credit? More broadly speaking, how should the new economic reality that followed from the changes in the concept of credit in the early modernization of the preindustrial economy be understood when viewed against various existing and new trends in society, including concepts such as consumption and fashion?
NOTE
* As part of a project that has mapped and recorded all early-modern bankruptcies in Stockholm between 1687 and 1849.
www.tidigmodernakonkurser.se In Sweden the early-modern institutions were reformed from the end of the eighteenth century only to be finally abolished in 1846. The research-group consists of Klas Nyberg (Stockholm University), Mats Hayen (The City Archive of Stockholm), Axel Hagberg (Stockholm School of Economics), Håkan Jakobsson (Stockholm University) and Paula von Wachenfeldt (Stockholm University).
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