Credit and the Rural Economy in North-western Europe, C. 1200-c. 1850

Book excerpt: This book retraces the nature and role of credit in the pre-industrial European countryside. As part of an ongoing examination of credit and its provision in European past societies, the nine papers collected in this volume offer further insight into the ways in which credit was provided and managed, as well as the opportunities which credit may or may not have presented in effecting economic and social change between c. 1200 and c. 1850. In these respects, the papers in this volume add to a developing investigation of the history of credit and of indebtedness in northern Europe, which also coincides with a continued interest in the structures of credit evident in studies of southern European societies. The present volume also, for a broad North Sea region, develops a concentration upon the economic and social history of credit from the late medieval period to the early nineteenth century. The themes here are deliberately focused on the nature of credit, its form and structure, as well as upon the economic and social impact of credit and the changing availability of the same. Phillipp Schofield is Professor of Medieval History at Aberystwyth University. He has published extensively on the social, economic and demographic history of late medieval peasant society in England. Thijs Lambrecht is postdoctoral researcher with the Research Foundation Flanders and the Department of Early Modern History at Ghent University. His research focuses on rural markets in the Southern Netherlands during the early modern period.