ABSTRACT
Women's experiences with credit in pre-industrial Europe were multidimensional. Women's ability to juggle time, money and credit depended on the complex balance linking social institutions, women's roles within society, their cultural construction, and the powers surrounding them, which defined women's place and their access to resources, whether land, labour or capital. The three principal branches of law to be found in Europe were far from being internally consistent. The various Italian regions were divided between the mixed influences of Roman, canon and Germanic law. The major area of change was the market-place, and this meant primarily the town. Everywhere since the Middle Ages the development of trading had been accompanied by an expansion of women's legal autonomy. War also created trading opportunities around drinking, eating and men's sociability. Certain characteristics of the economy of the ancien régime should be stressed, beginning with the lack of cash.
