Debts: the Good, the Bad and the Hidden: Bringing Family, Kin, Commerce and Consumption Debts Together

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Debts: the Good, the Bad and the Hidden: Bringing Family, Kin, Commerce and Consumption Debts Together

Veranstalter
Margareth Lanzinger, Matthias Donabaum, Janine Maegraith
Veranstaltungsort
Seminarraum Geschichte 1, Universität Wien, Hauptgebäude, Universitätsring 1
PLZ
1010
Ort
Wien
Land
Austria
Findet statt
In Präsenz
Vom - Bis
15.09.2022 - 17.09.2022
Von
Margareth Lanzinger, Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, Universität Wien

In this workshop we would like to address aspects concerning socio-economic practices around debts. We are particularly interested in opportunities and risks people took with secured and un-secured, short-term and long-term debts, and in the resulting balancing acts.

Debts: the Good, the Bad and the Hidden: Bringing Family, Kin, Commerce and Consumption Debts Together

First, we want to examine forms and logics of incurring debts, whether debts were formally or informally documented and if and how they were brokered. Regarding different kinds or agreements we will chart the effects of (life) annuities, mortgage debts, pledges and guarantees. Second, looking at specific stipulations we want to find out whether dates of repayments and/or interest rate payments were settled; whether universal or specific hypothecary securitization was common; whether lending was for investments, for consumption or repayment of other debts. Third, in terms of personal relation-ships we examine possibilities and problems connected with lending inside and outside family and kin. Finally, we ask what modes of repayment and/or restructuring of debt – via exchange, pur-chase, etc. – can be traced in the sources.

Particular focus will be placed on inheritance shares, marriage portions or dowries as debts and their effects: how were such family debts carried further and how were they transferred? Were they paid out and if so how? What consequences did they have compared to other debts? Who was liable for which debts? What gender-specific impact does this question have? It is our goal to look at family debt – often ‘hidden’ or underestimated in historiography – in conjunction with commercial and consumer debt.

Programm

Thursday, 15 September 2022

13.00 Reception

13.30 Welcome & Introduction

14.00–17.30 Panel I Credit Requirements: Necessity or Facilitator?
Chair: Margareth Lanzinger

14.00 Heinrich Lang (Leipzig/Vienna): Accounting Debts: Camilla Salviati Serristori and the Ambiguous Heritage of Giovanni Serristori’s Assets and Financial Liabilities in 1531

14.45 Matteo Pompermaier (Stockholm): Consumer Credit in Early Modern Venice: Forms and Logics of Households’ Debt

15.30 Coffee Break

16.00 Siglinde Clementi (Bozen/Bolzano): Marriage on Credit. Disbursement Modalities of Marriage Goods in the Early Modern Tyrolean Nobility

16.45 Janine Maegraith (Vienna): Financing Wealth Transfers in Early Modern Tyrol

Friday, 16 September 2022

09.30–12.15 Panel II: Transit(ional) Areas: Mountains, Residents and Migrants
Chair: Claudia Rapberger

09.30 Riccardo Rossi (Zürich): Wandering Debts and Settled Accounts: The Role of Credits in the Itineraries of Actors and Goods in the Three Leagues, 1660s–1790s

10.15 Laurence Fontaine (Paris): Solidarities, Control and Contingencies. The Multiple Faces of Debt in the Mountain Communities of the Upper Dauphine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

11.00 Coffee Break

11.30 Margareth Lanzinger (Vienna): Innkeepers as Creditors and Debtors in the Eighteenth Century

Lunch Break

14.00–17.30 Panel III: Urban Spaces: Documented Debts and Informal Agreements
Chair: Janine Maegraith

14.00 Christian Hagen (Kiel): A Money Market Inside and Outside the City Walls – Creditors and Debtors in Late Medieval Vienna

14.45 Maria Weber (München): Doing Debt in Early Sixteenth Century Augsburg

15.30 Coffee Break

16.00 Elise Dermineur (Stockholm): Non-Intermediated Credit in Early Modern France

16.45 Matthias Donabaum (Vienna): Orphans and Credit in Lower Austria, c. 1740–1790

Saturday, 17 September 2022

09.30–12.15 Panel IV Bankruptcy: When Things Go Wrong
Chair: Matthias Donabaum

09.30 Erich Landsteiner (Vienna): Big Money and Cruel Kin. The Bankruptcy of Jobst and Jacobina Croy in Vienna 1591

10.15 Florian Andretsch (Vienna): Punishment or Bailout? The Governmental and Familial Management of a Lower Austrian Noble House’s Bankruptcy at the Eve of the Reform Era

11.00 Coffee Break

11.30 James Shaw (Sheffield): Family Networks, Bankruptcy and Insolvency in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sheffield

12.15 Final Discussion