Legal Plunder : Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe / Daniel Lord Smail.
2016
HG3701
Linked e-resources
Linked Resource
Online Access
Details
Title
Legal Plunder : Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe / Daniel Lord Smail.
Author
Smail, Daniel Lord, author.
ISBN
9780674970106
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2016]
Copyright
©2016
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (344 p.) : 15 color illustrations, 8 halftones, 2 line illustrations, 6 graphs, 4 tables
Item Number
10.4159/9780674970106 doi
Call Number
HG3701
Dewey Decimal Classification
332.1753
Summary
As Europe began to grow rich during the Middle Ages, its wealth materialized in the well-made clothes, linens, and wares of ordinary households. Such items were indicators of one's station in life in a society accustomed to reading visible signs of rank. In a world without banking, household goods became valuable commodities that often substituted for hard currency. Pawnbrokers and resellers sprang up, helping push these goods into circulation. Simultaneously, a harshly coercive legal system developed to ensure that debtors paid their due.Focusing on the Mediterranean cities of Marseille and Lucca, Legal Plunder explores how the newfound wealth embodied in household goods shaped the beginnings of a modern consumer economy in late medieval Europe. The vigorous trade in goods that grew up in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entangled households in complex relationships of credit and debt, and one of the most common activities of law courts during the period was debt recovery. Sergeants of the law were empowered to march into debtors' homes and seize belongings equal in value to the debt owed. These officials were agents of a predatory economy, cogs in a political machinery of state-sponsored plunder.As Daniel Smail shows, the records of medieval European law courts offer some of the most vivid descriptions of material culture in this period, providing insights into the lives of men and women on the cusp of modern capitalism. Then as now, money and value were implicated in questions of power and patterns of violence.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 01. Dez 2022)
Linked Resources
Online Access
Record Appears in
Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
All Resources
Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Money, Units of Measurement, and Calendars
Introduction
1. The Values of Things
2. Credit and Coin
3. The Pursuit of Debt
4. The Plunder
5. Violence and Resistance
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Contents
Preface
Money, Units of Measurement, and Calendars
Introduction
1. The Values of Things
2. Credit and Coin
3. The Pursuit of Debt
4. The Plunder
5. Violence and Resistance
Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index