Before Banks

Elise Dermineur is an associate professor of economic history at Stockholms Universitet, Sweden and the author of Gender and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Sweden (2017) and Women and Credit in Preindustrial Europe (2019).

• Introduction; 1. The setting: mutual arrangements in small communities in the south of Alsace 1650 – 1790; 2. Peer-to-peer lending in non-intermediated credit markets; 3. Intermediated credit: notarial contracts; 4. Women and credit; 5. Insolvency and default; 6. The growing institutionalization of credit; Epilogue: the community of advantage.

‘This brilliantly researched book takes you right to the heart of the fabric of credit-based social relations in the French villages of the Ancien Régime, where everyone was both a lender and a debtor. It follows their disintegration from the 1760s onwards, and shows that ancient practices based on trust and solidarity still coexist in many parts of today's world with modern institutionalized and depersonalized forms of credit.’ Laurence Fontaine, Paris Sciences et Lettres