The ‘interests of commerce’: business failure in the Commercial Code Debates, 1801–07

Abstract

By rejecting guilds, the French Revolution heightened the importance of law in defining legitimate market activity. The debates on bankruptcy law in the Commercial Code from 1801 to 1807 were structured by a perceived crisis in credit following the Revolution. The debates involved two competing visions of the ‘interests of commerce’: buttressing market discipline for the market as a whole and smoothing debt recovery for creditors. The focus here is on the business representatives taking part in the debate, who faced the issue of defining commerce as an occupation within a legal framework. Since insolvency procedure was guided by local businessmen in the form of commercial courts, it became a debate on how commerce fit into the civic culture of post-revolutionary society. ‘Commerce’ as an entity ended up being both legitimated and delimited in ways that went beyond the usual stress on its special public utility.