Elise Dermineur

Trust, Norms of Cooperation and the Rural Credit Market in Early Modern France

An examination of the loans recorded by the notary in the seigneurie of Delle during the eighteenth century sheds light on alterations to the mechanisms of trust. In early modern France, the traditional local credit market was based on strong norms of cooperation and reciprocity, in which trust was taken for granted. Changes in the nature of investors and investments during the eighteenth century, however, disturbed this fragile social equilibrium, causing trust to migrate in several new directions.

French Historians 1900-2000 : New Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century France

account that extends to the current situation. In a welcoming fashion, nationalism is given a wide definition, to include attitudes to children and the family. As Kramer points out, nationalisms celebrated well-regulated heterosexuality, and pilloried homosexuals, as they appeared to deny the domestic rationale of competing nations. He also traces nationalism across the full range of social and political activity, although there is not really the space in the book to match the intellectual ambition. The traumas of the world wars are seen by Kramer as encouraging an alternative to unrestrained nationalisms, an account that may be less pertinent for the current situation, notably with China. Indeed Kramer’s view that major wars have become unthinkable may not be borne out in an over-populated world bitterly competing for resources. Thus, to turn this book around Kramer has much of interest to say, for example in comparing French and American republicanism and their universal missions, but his placing of nationalism in universal history may tell us more about the relative decline of the West and its conceptualisations than about the developing system.

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

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.

Revisiting Gender in European History, 1400-1800

Do women have a history? Did women have a renaissance? These were provocative questions when they were raised in the heyday of womens studies in the 1970s. But how relevant does gender remain to p ...

The Fairness of Contractual Exchange in a Private Law Society : A Case Study of Early Modern Credit Markets

Quite apart from the question of the justifiability – based on prior normative commitments – of legal rules controlling the substance of contractual exchange, such as a fair price rule, a common co ...

Common Land, Wine and the French Revolution. Rural Society and Economy in Southern France, c.1789-1820

Common Land, Wine and the French Revolution. Rural Society and Economy in Southern France, c.1789-1820