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2018 | Buch

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Land and Credit

Mortgages in the Medieval and Early Modern European Countryside

herausgegeben von: Chris Briggs, Jaco Zuijderduijn

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This volume investigates the use of mortgages in the European countryside between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. A mortgage allowed a loan to be secured with land or other property, and the practice has been linked to the transformation of the agrarian economy that paved the way for modern economic growth.

Historians have viewed the mortgage both positively and negatively: on the one hand, it provided borrowers with opportunities for investment in agriculture; but equally, it exposed them to the risk of losing their mortgaged property. The case studies presented in this volume reveal the variety of forms that the mortgage took, and show how an intricate balance was struck between the interests of the borrower looking for funds, and those of the lender looking for security. It is argued that the character of mortgage law, and the nature of rights in land in operation in any given the place and period, determined the degree to which mortgages were employed. Over time, developments in these factors allowed increasing numbers of peasants to use mortgages more freely, and with a decreasing risk of expropriation. This volume will be appealing to academics and researchers interested in financial history, credit and debt.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction: Mortgages and Annuities in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This Introduction outlines the key themes and concerns of Land and credit. It emphasizes the historical importance of the use of land and other real property as security for loans in the shape of mortgages and annuities. Such secured lending has often been ascribed a significant role in the development of the pre-industrial European economy, yet the exact character of that role has hitherto remained unclear, with some commentators placing an emphasis on peasant borrowing for investment while others stress peasant expropriation via mortgage foreclosure. The Introduction explores these possibilities and, drawing on the substantive chapters which follow, places particular emphasis on the part played by mortgage law and the evolution of mortgage instruments in shaping the extent to which borrowing on landed security was taken up in the European countryside in this period.

Chris Briggs, Jaco Zuijderduijn

Chapter 2. Mortgages and the English Peasantry c.1250–c.1350

Abstract

This chapter investigates the extent to which medieval English peasants mortgaged their land to secure credit. Its focus is on customary or villein land, whose holders owed servile obligations such as labour services in addition to cash rent. The chapter confirms the view, derived from the existing literature, that the employment of land or other real property as collateral was much less widespread in medieval English agrarian society than it was in this period in other regions of Continental Europe. Possible reasons for this contrast are explored, as well as its implications for financial development. It is concluded that the rarity of mortgages in the English customary landholding sector was the result of a combination of factors, connected with property rights and the strictness of the terms and conditions of most mortgages. Close investigation is also undertaken of circumstances in the small number of English communities where mortgaging is found to have been more common.

Chris Briggs

Chapter 3. Mortgages Raised by Rural English Copyhold Tenants 1605–1735

Abstract

This chapter examines a sector of the seventeenth-century credit market in which a specific group in English rural society, who held real property by copyhold of inheritance tenure, used their land as security to raise mortgage loans. A number of authors from Tawney onwards have observed copyholder mortgages in passing, but there has been no previous detailed study of them. The chapter therefore examines how these mortgages were arranged and recorded; the details of who borrowed; how much, when and the terms of repayment; and their possible motives for doing so. Similarly, the activity and nature of the lenders are explored and the relationship, if any, between them and the borrowers. The picture which emerges is of a widespread and significant credit market amongst chiefly the middling sector of rural society. Copyholder mortgages represented a particularly attractive and secure way to borrow and lend during a century before formal financial institutions such as banks had been established and yet after the reform of the usury laws permitted interest to be charged. The latter provoked a flowering of mortgage activity after 1600, and the former meant that interpersonal lending was the usual method of effecting it.

Juliet Gayton

Chapter 4. Mortgages and the Kentish Yeoman in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

This chapter looks at mortgages among yeomen in the county of Kent, England, where land was largely enclosed and the prevailing system of land tenure was gavelkind, characterised by freehold tenure and partible inheritance. It was a county of widespread land ownership and renowned prosperity, where small estates predominated. The use of mortgages during the period 1550–1700 is examined using title deeds for a single administrative area or ‘hundred’ where the history of the property and the participating families can be reconstructed. It finds that the market in finance among yeomen was a notably local one, neighbour lending to neighbour. There is little evidence of usury laws affecting the market; interest rates were related to the expected return on land rather than the maximum statutory rate. There was an increase in the volume of transactions after 1630, but, although this is suggestive, the volume is insufficient to indicate that the significant legal developments in the period were a stimulus. Such evidence as there is suggests that capital so raised was put to a variety of uses, but that failure to repay and sale of land was a frequent outcome.

Imogen Wedd

Chapter 5. Why the Equity of Redemption?

Abstract

This chapter explores why the equity of redemption—the doctrine that a mortgagor remains the true owner of the mortgaged land and may redeem after the date of the mortgage contract—arose. It does so by situating the doctrine in the social context of its origin in early modern England. It shows that several traditional explanations for the equity of redemption, such as the Chancery offering programmatic support for the landed classes, are likely misunderstandings. Instead, the doctrine is best understood as judicial enforcement of social norms related to mortgage debts in preference to legal technicalities. This piece thereby shows that the equity of redemption was a product of the culture of what reasonable people of the period ought to do in difficult cases instead of relying upon their legal rights.

D. P. Waddilove

Chapter 6. Credit and Land: The Jews of Zaragoza 1383–1400

Abstract

The Jews of the crown of Aragon enjoyed the pinnacle of their economic and political fortunes in the second half of the thirteenth century; during that period and in the early fourteenth century, they were major providers of credit, but with only very limited evidence of mortgage lending. By the late fourteenth century, the general fortunes of the Jews had declined and the economic and social environment was generally less favourable, yet the Jews of Zaragoza are found to have been operating a high-value credit business, based primarily on the pledging of land, closely associated with lively real estate investment activity. This continued unabated in Zaragoza even after 1391, when most other Jewish communities were subjected to popular attacks and many destroyed, resulting in large-scale forced conversion. The breakdown in inter-communal trust may well have been a key factor behind the trend towards mortgage lending, with the substitution of a highly valuable asset for the previously dominant personal guarantee. Evidence of an active land market suggests that, despite the fall in population and consequent decline in the rent:wage ratio, land seems to have remained an attractive investment asset during this period.

Michael Schraer

Chapter 7. Not Only Land: Mortgage Credit in Central-Northern Italy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the role of mortgages in the credit markets of central-northern Italy during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The intense economic change that was affecting Italian states by the middle of the sixteenth century—a change stimulated by the growth of the population and crop prices—received a powerful stimulus from the rural world. A land rush conducted by urban elites and the affluent ruling class produced a dramatic and profound transformation in the structure of ownership and tenure in the countryside. Traditional land loans came under significant pressure mainly in an effort to protect small proprietors and to avert radical shocks to the social equilibrium. These credit instruments backed by land—named census, pensio, and livellum—became frequently used and spread to almost all areas of the Peninsula’s countryside. However, new financial tools were being devised to counteract the troubles and the uncertainty that the stratified credit system represented for rural classes.

Giuseppe De Luca, Marcella Lorenzini

Chapter 8. Rural Credit Markets in Eighteenth-Century France: Contracts, Guarantees and Land

Abstract

This chapter looks at the significance of land in relation to credit in early modern France with special reference to the eighteenth century. Through a close examination of notarial contracts covering loans and credit practices, this chapter first presents the characteristics of the early modern French rural credit markets. Particular emphasis is placed on the various types of contracts available to agents in which land served as collateral. Obligations and rentes (annuities) are of particular relevance. Focusing on the credit market of a small rural community in Alsace, this chapter analyses in detail the meaning and evolution of landed guarantees over time. It argues that the significance of land as collateral decreased throughout the eighteenth century mostly because the local credit market was disrupted by a group of new investors from the emerging bourgeoisie. Socially and often geographically strangers to the local community, they began to extend credit and demanded not only stronger guarantees to secure their investments but also set rigid deadlines for repayment.

Elise M. Dermineur

Chapter 9. The Use of Perpetual Annuities in Rural Brabant in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the use of perpetual annuities in the duchy of Brabant. Data concerning the seigneurie of Kruikenburg near Brussels for the period between 1405 and 1553 are compared to existing case studies concerning other parts of Brabant. The study shows that the land and credit markets were already well established around 1400 in all parts of Brabant. During the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries, activity in these markets increased quite strongly. In all areas we can identify a strong local upper class, consisting of a small number of inter-related families. They were active as buyers and sellers of land and of annuities on a large scale. In the surroundings of Antwerp and Brussels, the closeness of a big urban centre had a strong impact on the credit market. Urban elites were active on the rural land market. The effects of the credit market on local property relations differed clearly between the different areas. While in the areas around Antwerp and Brussels the sixteenth century was characterized by an increasing concentration of landed property, the more remote Campine region rather maintained its egalitarian character.

Michael Limberger, Nicolas De Vijlder

Chapter 10. Proactive Peasants? The Role of Annuities in a Late Medieval Communal Society: The Campine Area, Low Countries

Abstract

Annuities, long-term credit transactions with land as collateral, were an important instrument throughout pre-industrial continental Europe. The easy availability of long-term credit, smoothly working institutions and the fact that people were able to use land as collateral have often been portrayed as a prerequisite for growth. However, recent research on the Low Countries firmly suggests that similar institutional frameworks did not necessarily lead to similar outcomes. Social context—social structures and power balances—acted as a prism, refracting institutional arrangements and leading to a multitude of results. The way the market for long-term credit functioned, and the role it played in different societies, could therefore diverge greatly. In this chapter, the focus will be on the role of long-term credit in a communal, peasant society—the Campine area—to illustrate how the region’s specific social context shaped a specific peasant-oriented use of this market.

Eline Van Onacker

Chapter 11. The Other Fundamental Problem of Exchange: Mortgages, Defaults and Debtor Protection in Sixteenth-Century Holland

Abstract

Mortgages, defaults and foreclosures of real estate have often been linked to the decline of peasant smallholding, and the rise of commercial farms run by townsmen and operated by landless labourers. However, little is known of how mortgage law was applied in practice. This chapter presents a case study, focusing on villagers who lost real estate during the process of expropriation for debt. It finds that there were large differences between the legal rights creditors held to pursue their debtors and their ability to enforce these rights. This was due to two characteristics of mortgage contracts: first, judges in local law courts had to authorize foreclosure, and as a result the execution of mortgage law was at their discretion. Second, judges looking to apply leniency were helped by the fact that mortgage contracts usually contained both a special and general mortgage. This allowed judges to allow only seizure of movables, thus preventing large-scale expropriation of real estate. As a result, the number of foreclosures of real estate was rather modest and expropriation was mainly applied in exceptional circumstances, such as debtors fleeing their creditors.

Jaco Zuijderduijn

Chapter 12. Afterword: Mortgages as Mediation Between Kin and Capital

Abstract

This Afterword offers reflections on the main findings of Land and credit, and points out possible directions for future research on mortgages. It provides an overview of some of the differences between England and civil law areas of Europe identified in the case study chapters; stresses the importance of variations in inheritance practices for understanding the frequency and character of mortgages; and seeks to make generalizations about chronological trends in the incidence of mortgaging over the period from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. It provides some sceptical comments of its own on the question of the relationship between property rights and the development of mortgage-based capital markets with their concomitant positive implications for economic growth. Where opportunities for fresh research are concerned the chapter notes, for instance, that one effect of the provision in this book of a series of studies on the rural mortgage is to reveal the need for fuller investigation of mortgage lending in urban centres.

Craig Muldrew

Backmatter

Titel: Land and Credit
herausgegeben von: Chris Briggs
Jaco Zuijderduijn
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-66209-1
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-66208-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66209-1