Social History of Credit

This chapter analyses how merchants and political institutions cope with failures and defaults that compromise credit relationships in an early modern trading center. Focussing on the structure of financing business and trade in Venice and on the legal framework that protects creditors, the essay links the widespread form of trading company (the temporary partnership) to the large recourse to arbitration procedures for solving disputes, and to the lesser efficiency of institutional and legal frameworks traditionally securing credit rights in Venice. ‘Credit, Defaults and Institutions in Early Modern Venice’ concludes with the hypothesis that the changing commercial environment and the spread of temporary societies reduce the protective strenght of Venetian institutions and increase instability in financing international trade.

This essay partakes in the dialogue between history, anthropology, and
social theory on the topic of debt as a social relation. Drawing on sources from nineteenth-century Switzerland, it examines everyday routines of debt collection in liberalism by taking the seized collateral object to the center of historical analysis. It is shown how the attached goods in a debtor’s household became an object of knowledge for nineteenth-century framers of law as well as for ordinary debtors. I make use of anthropological theory in order to describe the legal techniques of delineating and extracting collateral, and show how these legal techniques implied specific knowledge practices. I then look at two borderline cases of collateralization: the pawning of mobile goods and the imprisonment of insolvent debtors. Overall, on an epistemological level, debt collection appears as a double movement: it provided basic tools to untangle property relationships, yet all the while it created new, unpredictable complications. Thus debt collection was a distinctive arena in which the uneasy conceptual relationship between people and things in nineteenth-century liberalism unfolded. From this conceptual node I propose a historical epistemology of the collateral object.

This report is the result of a collaboration between CGAP and J.P. Morgan. CGAP is solely responsible for the printing and distribution of this Occasional Paper. CGAP is not affiliated with J.P. Morgan. Our objective is to provide benchmarks for valuation of microfinance equity, both private and publicly listed. Our analysis is based on two datasets: a sample of 144 private equity transactions, which represents the largest such dataset gathered to date, and data on 10 publicly traded micro finance institutions (MFIs) and low-income consumer lenders. 1

In recent decades, international
historiography has made a great effort to
understand the role played by private credit
in medieval and modern economies. The
viewpoints analysed by historians include
the study of legal, social and economic
aspects of credit. In this respect, seizing
on the social and economic situation in
Castile at the end of the Middle Ages,
this paper aims to set forth some keys to
understanding private credit in the Crown
of Castile. The combined analysis of the
theoretical bases of credit, its application
and its impact on the development of
social ties constitutes a fi eld of research
with great potential.
Keywords: credit; debt; litigation; fi nan- cial history; crown of Castile.

El presente trabajo indaga el papel que los desembolsos de la Real Caja de Buenos Aires tenían sobre la actividad económica de la comarca durante el siglo XVII, identificando la incidencia que dichos flujos de recursos fiscales tuvieron sobre los actores más influyentes en el mercado local. Para ello, se sigue la hipótesis según la cual los flujos de valores de origen fiscal (o gasto público) incidían, aunque desigualmente, en el desenvolvimiento económico de los actores. Para dilucidar el problema, se ponen en contacto dos universos: el de la interacción económica entre particulares (vislumbrado en la red de escrituras notariales) y el de los desembolsos de la Real Caja de Buenos Aires. Un básico indicador reticular pareciera expresar la incidencia del segundo universo sobre el primero: la centralidad de intermediación detentada por los actores en la interacción económica. En este sentido, el artículo no pretende avanzar sobre el "impacto económico del gasto público", la composición ni la tipología del gasto público en Buenos Aires durante el siglo XVII, como tampoco ahonda en las singularidades de la economía de transacciones interpersonales sobre la que se efectúa el análisis, en la medida en que estos aspectos fueron abordados en otros trabajos debidamente referidos.

This paper deals with the role of the public spending in the economic activity, identifying the incidence that the fiscal disbursement had on the performance of the most influential actors in the local market. The hypothesis proposed is that the economic performance of the actors was affected, unequally, by the flows of resources of fiscal origin. To address this hypothesis, two universes are put in contact: the economic interaction between individuals, and the disbursements of the Royal Treasury of Buenos Aires. A basic indicator expresses the incidence of the second universe on the first one: the betweenness centrality held by the actors in the economic interaction. This article does not deal with the " economic impact of the public spending " , neither with the typology of the public expenditures, nor does it explain the singularities of the interpersonal transactions economy over wich the analysis is carried out, in the extent that those topics have been addressed in different papers, properly referred.

This paper follows the enslaved woman Teofila from captivity to freedom in 19th-century Rio de Janeiro. To become a free woman, Teofila had to navigate the complex private credit networks of the West African community of the Brazilian capital city. With limited banking activity, the Cariocas relied on one another for their financial needs, making for a highly convivial credit market that reflected and reinforced the vast inequalities of Brazilian slave society. While following Teofila through the courts of Rio de Janeiro, this paper will demonstrate that one of the cornerstones of the city’s credit market was the presence of an intertwined relationship between credit and private property. The commerce in human beings like Teofila produced thousands of negotiable titles, with slavery working as a propeller for credit circulation and one of its pillars – slave property was the primary collateral for unpaid debts.

Resumo
A presente tese tem como foco o mercado privado e não institucional de crédito na cidade do Rio de Janeiro entre os anos de 1820 a 1860. Através de uma análise de jornais, livros de notas, ações de execução de dívidas, penhoras judiciais e registros de letras, buscou-se traçar um quadro que evidência a complementaridade entre os diferentes instrumentos de crédito em circulação na praça carioca durante o período. Embora a cidade não tenha contado com um sistema bancário entre os anos de 1829 até 1838, isto não impediu um acentuado crescimento demográfico e comercial. Este incremento nas atividades econômicas geraram forte demanda por capitais que foi suprida por um incentivo estatal que visava direcionar a poupança e capitais privados ao mercado, criando com isso um amplo e complexo mercado privado de crédito cujo um importante pilar de sustentação foi a presença de uma relação interligada e circular entre crédito e propriedade privada. A cidade contava na época com um aquecido mercado de penhor e de segunda mão que foi capaz de absorver e impulsionar este movimento cíclico entre crédito e propriedade. Dentro deste quadro, a escravidão teve um papel de destaque e as penhoras judiciais indicam que a propriedade escrava garantiu o pagamento de dívidas, servindo não apenas como lastro, mas também como importante propulsor à circulação de crédito durante a primeira metade do século XIX na cidade do Rio de Janeiro.

Abstract
This dissertation investigates the private and non-institutional credit markets in the city of Rio de Janeiro between the years of 1820 to 1860. Based on a research and analysis of newspaper, notary books, debt ligation cases, judicial attachments and bills of exchange registries, this study seeks to build the background of the city´s credit market, one in which becomes evident a strong complementarity between the different credit titles in circulation in the city at the time. Even though Rio has had no banking system between 1829 and 1838, the city experienced a sharp demographic and commercial boom during these period. Such increase in the city’s economic activity was responsible for a striking rise in the demand for investment capital and such demand was met by a coordinated state effort that striven to allocate and redirect private savings towards the market. Such movement was responsible for the emergence of a vast and complex private credit market in which one of its cornerstones was the presence of an intertwined relationship between credit and private property. At that time, the city had a thriving pawning and second-hand goods market that was able to accommodate and foster this circular dynamics observed between private property and credit. This created a background where slaves had an important role and judicial attachments of slave property as means of securing debts served an important function, both as a safeguard and propeller for credit circulation during the first half of the nineteenth century in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

This is a chapter in an edited volume on the global history of money and credit. The chapter examines the imbrication of liberal rule and received communal practices that dealt with debt collection and bankruptcy in nineteenth-century Switzerland. I propose to view legal norms in parallel with everyday practices and forms of claims-making in an industrializing society. Of special interest are the spatial contours and temporal rhythms of debt collection; these reveal the metrologies at work in the ever-contested legitimacy of debt and obligation.