Rents instead of land. Credit and peasant indebtedness in late medieval Mediterranean Iberia: the kingdom of Valencia

Antoni Furió

doi:10.1017/s0268416021000138

Abstract

AbstractThe literature on the rural economy of the high and late Middle Ages has long established a close correlation between three significant features of the period: the spread of rural credit, the dynamism of the peasant land market and the expropriation of peasant land by the creditors, usually yeomen or urban landowners. There has even been talk for some countries (northern Italy) of a deliberate strategy of territorial conquest, insofar as the credit provided by urban lenders would aim at the expropriation of land from insolvent debtors. This article studies for the Mediterranean Spain of the late Middle Ages, and in particular for the old kingdom of Valencia, other objectives of rural credit and other alternatives to peasant expropriation in case of insolvency. Based on the rich archival holdings of the region, mainly notarial and judicial records, the article studies the dissemination of rural credit, the different modalities (short and long term), the motivations of creditors and debtors, the types of interest, the guarantors and the goods given as collateral for the loans, their confiscation in case of delay or insolvency. It concludes that, unlike elsewhere, the creditors, rather than in land, were interested in rents, that is, in the annuities paid to them by the debtors as interest on the loans obtained. The spread of long-term credit, therefore, not only did not threaten or subvert but also strengthened a system of land ownership, tenure and management based on regular rents extraction.

Highlights

The expropriation of the peasantry has been widely considered a condition for the development of agrarian capitalism.[1]
The forms and especially the chronology of this expropriation would mark the differences between England and France and a good part of the European continent, where the ownership of land remained in the hands of the peasants until the end of the eighteenth century and even the beginning of the nineteenth.[2]
In France, the spread of rural credit and the dynamism

Summary

Introduction

The expropriation of the peasantry has been widely considered a condition for the development of agrarian capitalism.[1]. Short-term credit – notably, but , loans at interest granted by Jewish moneylenders – has been studied for many years from both notarial and judicial documentation,[24] as have the origins and formation of the long-term credit market, from notarial sources focusing mainly on the city of Valencia.[25] On the contrary, the prosecution and punishment of arrears, which can only be examined from the judicial records, has to date barely been addressed: just one study of a rural community at the end of the fifteenth century, carried out by a team of which I was a member and published almost thirty years ago.[26] In this paper, I have directed my attention primarily to the notarial and judicial records of three localities: the city of Valencia, whose fertile countryside (the huerta, irrigated land) was strongly subject to urban influence,[27] and especially the towns of Cocentaina and Alcoi, more rural in nature, with a large population working in manufacturing and nonagricultural activities. All of them have allowed to me gather a sample consisting of 4,071 documents

Short-term and long-term credit and indebtedness

Conclusion

French Abstract

German Abstract