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Legal Plunder: Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe
Daniel Lord Smail
€ 61.33
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Description for Legal Plunder: Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe
Hardback. As a Europe grew rich in the Middle Ages, the well-made clothes, linens, and wares of households often substituted for hard currency. Pawnbrokers kept goods in circulation, and sergeants of the law marched into debtors' homes to seize belongings equal in value to debts owed. David Smail describes a material world on the cusp of modern capitalism. Num Pages: 320 pages. BIC Classification: HBJD; HBLC1; HBTB. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 235 x 156. .
As Europe began to grow rich during the Middle Ages, its wealth materialized in the well-made clothes, linens, and wares of ordinary households. In a world without banking, household goods became valuable commodities that often substituted for hard currency. Pawnbrokers and resellers sprung up throughout European cities, helping push these goods into circulation. Simultaneously, a harshly coercive legal system developed to ensure that debtors paid their due. Legal Plunder explains how the vigorous trade in goods that grew up in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe entangled households in complex relationships of credit and debt. Acting in the interests of creditors, sergeants of the law were empowered to march into debtors' homes and seize belongings equal in value to the debt owed. These officials were cogs in a political machinery of state-sponsored plunder. As Daniel Smail shows, one of the common activities of medieval law courts was debt recovery, and court records offer some of the most vivid descriptions of material culture in this period, providing insight into the lives of men and women living in a world on the cusp of modern capitalism. Then as now, money and value were implicated in questions of power and patterns of violence.
Product Details
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2016
Condition
New
Weight
673g
Number of Pages
320
Place of Publication
Cambridge, Mass, United States
ISBN
9780674737280
SKU
V9780674737280
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-13
About Daniel Lord Smail
Daniel Lord Smail is Professor of History at Harvard University.
Reviews for Legal Plunder: Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe
A terrific book, rich with well-told anecdotes as well as smart analytical interventions. Smail makes ordinary people more than mere onlookers or victims of the long so-called commercial revolution of Europe.
Martha Howell, Columbia University Fascinating and highly original. Smail writes with great fluency, a distinctive voice, and disarming charm. He has a gift for using understudied sources to analyze fresh and important questions.
Carol Lansing, University of California, Santa Barbara A magisterial examination of the transformation of the medieval economy. While the entire book is remarkably insightful and erudite, the chapters on the excessive acts of the state against its citizens and the concomitant violent resistance are particularly brilliant.
Teofilo F. Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles Full of unexpected insights, this exciting and innovative social history brings the late Middle Ages to life through everyday objects that served as the basis of an emotional package of vanity, optimism, humiliation, and violence surrounding debt seizures.
Paul Freedman, Yale University A massive historical undertaking that sheds considerable light on wealth and credit in medieval Europe.
S. Pressman Choice (10/01/2016) Daniel Lord Smail's fascinating Legal Plunder: Household and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe shows that 'offshore' or private money creation (i.e. credit) played a significant part even in the Middle Ages.
(04/21/2017) Legal Plunder is only partly about the exploration of grand interpretive ideas using a medieval case study. The book will also stimulate readers interested primarily in debates about the economy, society and culture of late medieval Europe. Its main conclusions will surely excite discussion and further exploration.
(12/01/2016)
Martha Howell, Columbia University Fascinating and highly original. Smail writes with great fluency, a distinctive voice, and disarming charm. He has a gift for using understudied sources to analyze fresh and important questions.
Carol Lansing, University of California, Santa Barbara A magisterial examination of the transformation of the medieval economy. While the entire book is remarkably insightful and erudite, the chapters on the excessive acts of the state against its citizens and the concomitant violent resistance are particularly brilliant.
Teofilo F. Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles Full of unexpected insights, this exciting and innovative social history brings the late Middle Ages to life through everyday objects that served as the basis of an emotional package of vanity, optimism, humiliation, and violence surrounding debt seizures.
Paul Freedman, Yale University A massive historical undertaking that sheds considerable light on wealth and credit in medieval Europe.
S. Pressman Choice (10/01/2016) Daniel Lord Smail's fascinating Legal Plunder: Household and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe shows that 'offshore' or private money creation (i.e. credit) played a significant part even in the Middle Ages.
(04/21/2017) Legal Plunder is only partly about the exploration of grand interpretive ideas using a medieval case study. The book will also stimulate readers interested primarily in debates about the economy, society and culture of late medieval Europe. Its main conclusions will surely excite discussion and further exploration.
(12/01/2016)