1st Edition

A History of the Credit Market in Central Europe The Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Edited By Pavla Slavíčková Copyright 2021
    278 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    278 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This is the first comprehensive study of loans and debts in Central European countries in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. It outlines the issues of debts and loans in the Czech lands, Poland and Hungary, with respect to the influence of Austria and Germany. It focuses on the role of loans and debts in medieval and early modern society, credit markets in these countries, the mechanism of lending and borrowing, forms of credit, availability of loans, frequency of credits dealings, range of lending business, and last, but not least, the financial relationships inside the social classes and between them.

    The research presented in the book is based on a wide range of resources including credit contracts and agreements, evidence of loans and debts of courts, accounting of nobility, towns, churches and guilds, merchant diaries and Jewish registers, as well as other financial records. It covers a wide range of historical disciplines including economic and financial history, social history, the history of economic thought as well as the history of everyday life. It also contains a wealth of case studies, which offer, for the first time in English, a comprehensive and representative sample of the most up-to-date Central European research on the history of loans and debts and serves as a basis for a comparison with the other parts of Europe during the same period.

    The book is designed primarily for postgraduates, researchers and academics in financial, economic and historical sciences but will also be a valuable resource for students of business schools.

    Introduction: credit in Central European historiography

    ROMAN ZAORAL

    PART 1 Loans and debts as a part of royal finances

    1 Loan transactions in the Kingdom of Hungary up to the end of the 14th century

    BOGLÁRKA WEISZ

    2 Loans and debts of the Bohemian kings in the Middle Ages: from the last Přemyslids until the end of the pre-Hussite period (1262–1419)

    ZDENĚK ŽALUD

    3 Income and expenditures of the Hungarian Royal Chamber during the first ruling years of King Vladislaus Jagiellon: analysis of an accounting register from the years 1494–1495

    PETR KOZÁK

    4 The beginnings of royal pledging in the Kingdom of Hungary

    JÁNOS INCZE

    5 King’s debts and king’s creditors in Poland in the first half of the 15th century

    PIOTR GUZOWSKI

    6 The political and economic relevance of Jewish loans for the dukes of Austria during the late Middle Ages

    EVELINE BRUGGER

    PART 2 Credit market in medieval and early modern towns

    7 Written sources concerning debts and loans in late medieval Czech towns

    HANA PÁTKOVÁ

    8 Monetary credit market in the cities of the southern Baltic coast in the late Middle Ages (Greifswald, Gdańsk, Elbląg, Toruń, Rewel)

    CEZARY KARDASZ

    9 Rural credit and monetarisation of the peasantry in the late Middle Ages: the Eger city state c. 1450

    TOMÁŠ KLÍR

    10 The credit market in Old Warsaw in the late Middle Ages

    PIOTR ŁOZOWSKI

    11 Credit and finance in Rudolphine Prague 

    MARIE BUŇATOVÁ

    12 The credit market of a small peripheral Polish town in the early modern period

    MONIKA KOZŁOWSKA-SZYC

    13 Jewish credit business in the urban context of late medieval Austria

    BIRGIT WIEDL

    PART 3 Economic, political, legal and other consequences of debts and loans 

    14 Economical and political consequences of the limiting of the statutory maximum interest rate in Central Europe from 10% to 6% since 1543

    PETR VOREL

    15 Legal regulation of the credit market in Bohemia and Moravia

    PAVLA SLAVÍČKOVÁ

    16 The trade in farm money in rural areas in the 16th and 17th centuries (using the example of small towns on the Pardubice estate)

    TEREZA SIGLOVÁ

    17 Investments of a south Bohemian ‘banker’ in the first half of the 16th century: the credit operations of Knight Petr Doudlebský of Doudleby

    TOMÁŠ STERNECK

    18 The Lithuanian Evangelical Reformed Church as a credit institution in the 17th century

    MARZENA LIEDKE AND PIOTR GUZOWSKA

    19 Debts and claims as a part of administration and everyday life of Bohemian chamber estates in the early modern period

    ZUZANA VLASÁKOVÁ

    20 Financial aspects of the property transactions of rural subjects in Moravia in the 16th and 17th centuries

    BRONISLAV CHOCHOLÁČ

    21 Debt in the life of a Gdansk merchant

    ANNA PAULINA ORŁOWSKA

    Index

    Biography

    Pavla Slavíčková is an assistant professor at the Palacky University in Olomouc, the Czech Republic.