Suchergebnisse

Introduction / Manon van der Heijden and Griet Vermeesch -- The Sinitic justice system, past and present in a global perspective / Philip C. C. Huang -- Threads of the legal web : Dutch law and everyday colonialism in eighteenth-century Asia / Alicia Schrikker and Dries Lyna -- Facing the law in eighteenth-century Galle / Nadeera Rupesinghe -- Legal pluralism in the cities of the early modern Kingdom of Poland : the jurisdictional conflicts and uses of justice by Armenian merchants / Alexandr Osipian -- The use and abuse of legal services in nineteenth-century Russia / Elizaveta Blagodeteleva -- Skipping court : civil disputes in sixteenth-century Rouen / Katherine Godwin -- In hope of agreement : norm and practice in the use of institutes for dispute settlement in late seventeenth-century Leiden / Aries van Meeteren and Griet Vermeesch -- Justice and the confines of the law in early modern Spain / Tomás Mantecón -- Lo extrajudicial : between court and community in the Spanish empire / Bianca Premo -- Legal pluralism, hybridization and the uses of everyday criminal law in Quebec, 1760-1867 / Donald Fyson

This volume investigates the use of mortgages in the European countryside between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. A mortgage allowed a loan to be secured with land or other property, and the practice has been linked to the transformation of the agrarian economy that paved the way for modern economic growth. Historians have viewed the mortgage both positively and negatively: on the one hand, it provided borrowers with opportunities for investment in agriculture; but equally, it exposed them to the risk of losing their mortgaged property. The case studies presented in this volume reveal the variety of forms that the mortgage took, and show how an intricate balance was struck between the interests of the borrower looking for funds, and those of the lender looking for security. It is argued that the character of mortgage law, and the nature of rights in land in operation in any given the place and period, determined the degree to which mortgages were employed. Over time, developments in these factors allowed increasing numbers of peasants to use mortgages more freely, and with a decreasing risk of expropriation. This volume will be appealing to academics and researchers interested in financial history, credit and debt