Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial Europe

Description

This collection of essays compares and discusses women’s participation and experiences in credit markets in early modern Europe, and highlights the characteristics, common mechanisms, similarities, discrepancies, and differences across various regions in Europe in different time periods, and at all levels of society. The essays focus on the role of women as creditors and debtors (a topic largely ignored in traditional historiography), but also and above all on the development of their roles across time. Were women able to enter the credit market, and if so, how and in what proportion? What was then the meaning of their involvement in this market? What did their involvement mean for the community and for their household? Was credit a vector of female emancipation and empowerment? What were the changes that occurred for them in the transition to capitalism? These essays offer a variety of perspectives on women’s roles in the credit markets of early modern Europe in order to outline and answer these questions as well as analysing and exploring the nature of women, money, credit, and debt in a pre-industrial Europe. Front Matter, p. i https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.117552 Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial Europe: An Overview, p. 1 Elise M. Dermineur https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115746 High Finance: Women And Staple Credit in England, 1353-1532, p. 19 Richard Goddard https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115747 Women, Attorneys, and Credit in Late Medieval England, p. 45 Matthew Frank Stevens https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115748 Creditworthy Women and Town Courts in Late Medieval England, p. 73 Teresa Phipps https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115749 The Ages of Women and Men: Life Cycles, Family, and Investment in the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries, p. 95 Jaco Zuijderduijn https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115750 Providing Security for Others: Swedish Women in Early Modern Credit Networks, p. 121 Maria Ågren https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115751 Women’s Participation in Rural Copyhold Mortgages in Seventeenth Century England, p. 143 Juliet Gayton https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115752 Women, Credit, and Dowry in Early Modern Italy, p. 173 James E. Shaw https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115753 Gold, Ink, and Tears: The Hazards of Credit and the Indebted Widow in Eighteenth-Century Germany, p. 203 Eve Rosenhaft https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115754 Never-Married Women and Credit in Early Modern England, p. 227 Judith M. Spicksley https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115755 Credit, Strategies, and Female Empowerment in Early Modern France, p. 253 Elise M. Dermineur https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115756 Women and Money: Credit, Debt, and Status in the Eighteenth-Century London Court of Exchequer, p. 281 Margaret Hunt https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115757 Women, Small Credit, and Community: Barcelona in the Eighteenth Century, p. 301 Montserrat Carbonell-Esteller https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115758 Women and Credit in the Area of Santiago de Compostela at the end of the Old Regime (1770-1805), p. 321 Francisco Cebreiro Ares https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115759 Concluding Remarks, p. 345 Laurence Fontaine https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.115760 Back Matter ("Index"), p. 361 https://doi.org/10.1484/M.EER-EB.5.117553