ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|67 pages
Loans and debts as a part of royal finances
chapter Chapter 1|12 pages
Loan transactions in the Kingdom of Hungary up to the end of the 14th century
chapter Chapter 2|9 pages
Loans and debts of the Bohemian kings in the Middle Ages
chapter Chapter 3|10 pages
Income and expenditures of the Hungarian Royal Chamber during the first ruling years of King Vladislaus Jagiellon
chapter Chapter 5|13 pages
King’s debts and king’s creditors in Poland in the first half of the 15th century
part 2|87 pages
Credit market in medieval and early modern towns
chapter Chapter 9|18 pages
Rural credit and monetarisation of the peasantry in the late Middle Ages
chapter Chapter 12|10 pages
The credit market of a small peripheral Polish town in the early modern period
part 3|89 pages
Economic, political, legal and other consequences of debts and loans