ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces briefly the pre-industrial origins of the respective laws, analyses their major weaknesses and describes their development in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It shows that the major structural defects which were prevalent in several sectors of the debt laws were exacerbated by the strains imposed by economic expansion towards the end of the eighteenth century. And that the consequent movements for reform, led by practical, theoretical and humanitarian critics, were followed in the 1830s and 1840s by radical changes not only in the law itself but also in basic attitudes to the relationship between law and the economic system. The book focuses on bankruptcy alone, examining the causes of its dramatic increase at the start of the nineteenth century. It also discusses the major economic influences upon bankruptcy levels between 1795 and 1826.
