Promise and Peril of Credit (eBook)

What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society

Francesca Trivellato (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2019
424 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-18537-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Francesca Trivellato is professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is the author of The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period.

---

How an antisemitic legend gave voice to widespread fears surrounding the expansion of private credit in Western capitalismThe Promise and Peril of Credit takes an incisive look at pivotal episodes in the West's centuries-long struggle to define the place of private finance in the social and political order. It does so through the lens of a persistent legend about Jews and money that reflected the anxieties surrounding the rise of impersonal credit markets.By the close of the Middle Ages, new and sophisticated credit instruments made it easier for European merchants to move funds across the globe. Bills of exchange were by far the most arcane of these financial innovations. Intangible and written in a cryptic language, they fueled world trade but also lured naive investors into risky businesses. Francesca Trivellato recounts how the invention of these abstruse credit contracts was falsely attributed to Jews, and how this story gave voice to deep-seated fears about the unseen perils of the new paper economy. She locates the legend's earliest version in a seventeenth-century handbook on maritime law and traces its legacy all the way to the work of the founders of modern social theory-from Marx to Weber and Sombart.Deftly weaving together economic, legal, social, cultural, and intellectual history, Trivellato vividly describes how Christian writers drew on the story to define and redefine what constituted the proper boundaries of credit in a modern world increasingly dominated by finance.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.2.2019
• Reihe/Serie: Histories of Economic Life
• Reihe/Serie: Histories of Economic Life
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• Schlagworte: Admiralty Law • Ancien Régime • Anecdote • Antisemitism • appellate court • Armenians • ars mercatoria • Bank • Banknote • Banknotes • Bankruptcy • Bills of exchange • bookkeeping • Bordeaux • Capitalism • Catholic France • catholic theologians • Christian merchants • Church doctrines • city-state • classical republicanism • Commerce • commercial credit • Commercialization • Commercial Law • commercial revolution • Commodity • credibility • credit contract • credit contracts • credit instruments • Credit market • Creditor • Criticism • crypto-Judaism • Currency • debt • Debtor • Early Modern Europe • early modern period • economic behaviors • Economic History • Economic Power • Economics • edict • England • Entrepreneurship • Equality • Étienne Cleirac • European commercial society • European private finance • Exchange Rate • Exclusion • financial contracts • financial credit • Financial Instrument • Fraud • French commercial society • French Historical Studies • German Historical School • good faith • Handbook • historian • Historiography • Holy Roman Empire • huguenot • indictment • Institution • insurance • insurance policy • Interest Rate • International Trade • Investor • Isaac de Pinto • Italian refugees • Jacque Savary • Jean-Baptiste Colbert • Jewish emancipation • Jewish History • Jewish moneylenders • Jewish usury • Jews • Jonathan Israel • Judaism • Jurist • Karl Marx • Late Middle Ages • Lawsuit • lawyer • Legal History • Literature • Livorno • Lombards • Lombardy • Long-distance Trade • Marine insurance • Marine insurance policies • maritime laws • Marketplace • Matthew Paris • Max Weber • mercantilism • merchant • merchant-bankers • modern capitalism • Modernity • modern social thought • MONEY • moneylender • Montesquieu • Moses Mendelssohn • narrative • new Christian • New Christians • Nobility • Old Regime Europe • Oligopoly • ordonnance • overseas commerce • Pamphlet • paper economy • paper money • parlement • Pawnbroker • pawnbroking • Payment • Persecution • Political Economy • Politics • Private finance • private trade • Prose • Protestantism • Publication • Religion • remittance • Roman law • Sephardi Jews • Spanish and Portuguese Jews • Tax • Tax Collector • The Spirit of the Laws • Toleration • treatise • United Provinces • Usance • usury • Wealth • Werner Sombart • Western Capitalism • World trade • Writing
• ISBN-10: 0-691-18537-9 / 0691185379
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-18537-8 / 9780691185378