Loan Sharks and Small Fry : Creditors and Debtors in the Debt Recognizances in 15th Century Basel

Abstract

Together with many of the social science disciplines neighbouring history, economics has developed into a branch of science committed to the hic et nunc of the present. Consequently, even in the handbooks of economic history, only few references to the historicity of consumer credit, arguably at the core of modern-day banking and consumers’ use of credit cards, can be found. Economics is, however, the wrong avenue to broach this issue. Lateral entry through historical anthropology appears to be more fruitful, as has been shown, for instance, by Craig Muldrew’s micro-study of the early modern harbour town King’s Lynn, or Beate Sturm’s work on early modern Hanover. According to Muldrew, personal trust rather than calculations of profit and loss dominated the credit system of the East Anglian harbour town. It is debatable whether credits always aligned with the stipulations of trust in the pre-modern world and whether pre-modern societies can indeed be understood as trust societies. For the pre-modern world is as little a unified whole in economic concerns as it is in all others. In contrast to trust, late medieval tendencies of formalisation, which I will focus on in the following, can be observed across Europe. Formalisation refers to juridification and the keeping of written records, which cities used in their attempt to regulate the overloaded credit system in an orderly manner.