Debt: The First 5000 Years Part 19

133. They appear to have used Greek serfs at first, and sometimes Arabs captured in the Crusades, and only later, Africans. Still, this was the economic model that was eventually transported by Portuguese merchants to Atlantic islands like the Canaries, then eventually to the Caribbean (Verlinden 1970, Phillips 1985:9397, Solow 1987, Wartburg 1995).

134. Scammell 1981:17375.

135. Spufford 1988:142 136 On the notion of adventure: Auerbach 1946, Nerlich 1977.

137. Duby (1973) makes this point. The "round table" was originally a type of tournament, and especially in the 1300s, it became common to make such tournaments explicit imitations of King Arthur's court, with knights entering the contests taking on roles from them: Galahad, Gawain, Bors, etc.

138. Also at a time when technological changes, especially the invention of the crossbow and the rise of professional armies, were beginning to render knights' role in combat increasingly irrelevant (Vance 1973).

139. Kelly 1937:10.

140. See Schoenberger 2008 for a recent and compelling take: comparing the role of war mobilization in creating markets in Greece and Rome to Western Europe in the High Middle Ages.

141. Wolf 1954.

142. A point originally made by Vance (1986:48). The similarity is more obvious in the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal, written perhaps twenty years later, in which knights "roam freely over Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, to Baghdad, Armenia, India, Ceylon" (Adolf 1957:113)-and Islamic references are legion (Adolf 1947, 1957)-that is, areas known to Europeans of the time only through trade. The fact that actual merchants, on those rare occasions when they appear, are never sympathetic characters has little bearing.

143. Wagner, Die Wibelungen: Weltgeschichte aus der Sage (1848)-which in English is "World History as Told in Saga." I am taking my account of Wagner's argument from another wonderful, if sometimes extravagant, essay by Marc Sh.e.l.l called "Accounting for the Grail" (1992:3738). Wagner's argument is really more complicated: it centers on the failed attempt by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to subdue the Italian city-states and the abandonment of his principle that property can only flow from the king; instead, we have the rise of mercantile private property, which is echoed by financial abstraction.

144. Sh.e.l.l sees the Grail as a transformation of the older notion of the cornucopia or inexhaustible purse in an age "just beginning to be acquainted with checks and credit"-noting the connection of the legend with the Templars, and fact that Chretien-whose name means "Christian"-was likely, for that reason, to have been a converted Jew. Wolfram also claimed that he got the legend from a Jewish source (Sh.e.l.l 1992:4445).

145. Even China was often split and fractured. Just about all the great empire-building projects of the Middle Ages were the work not of professional armies, but of nomadic peoples: the Arabs, Mongols, Tatars, and Turks.

146. Nicomachean Ethics 1133a2931.

147. He compares money not only to a postman, but also, to a "ruler," who also stands outside society to govern and regulate our interactions. It's interesting to note that Thomas Aquinas, who might have been directly influenced by Ghazali (Ghazanfar 2000), did accept Aristotle's argument that money was a social convention that humans could just as easily change. For a while, in the late Middle Ages, this became the predominant Catholic view.

148. As far as I know, the only scholar to have pointed out the connection is Bernard Faure, a French student of j.a.panese Buddhism: Faure 1998:798, 2000:225.

149. Later still, as cash transactions became more common, the term was applied to small sums of cash offered as down-payment, rather in the sense of English "earnest money." On symbola in general: Beauchet 1897; Jones 1956:217; Sh.e.l.l 1978:3235.

150. Descat 1995:986.

151. Aristotle On Interepretation 1.1617. Whitaker (2002:10) thus observes that for Aristotle, "the meaning of a word is fixed by convention, just as the importance attached to a tally, token, or ticket depends on agreement between the parties concerned."

152. Nicomachean Ethics 1133a2931.

153. But they believed that these formulae summed up or "drew together" the essence of those secret truths that the Mysteries revealed-"symbolon," being derived the verb symballein, meaning "to gather, bring together, or compare."

154. Muri 1931, Meyer 1999. The only knowledge we have of such symbola comes from Christian sources; Christians later adopted their own symbolon, the Creed, and this remained the primary referent of the term "symbol" throughout the Middle Ages (Ladner 1979).

155. Or pseudo-Dionysius, since the real Dionysius the Areopagite was a first-century Athenian converted to Christianity by St. Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius' works are an attempt to reconcile neo-Platonism, with its notion of philosophy as the process of the liberation of the soul from material creation and its reunification with the divine, with Christian orthodoxy. Unfortunately, his most relevant work, Symbolic Theology, has been lost, but his surviving works all bear on the issue to some degree.

156. In Barasch 1993:161.

157. Pseudo-Dionysius, On the Celestial Hierarchy 141AC. On Dionysius' theory of symbolism in general, and its influence, see Barasch 1993:15880, also Goux 1990:67, Gadamer 2004:6364.

158. He calls them, like communion, "gifts that are granted to us in symbolic mode." On the Celestial Hierarchy 124A.

159. Mathews 1934:283. Compare the definition of symbolon: A. tally, i.e. each of two halves or corresponding pieces of a knucklebone or other object, which two guest friends, or any two contracting parties, broke between them, each party keeping one piece, in order to have proof of the ident.i.ty of the presenter of the other.

B. of other devices having the same purpose, e.g. a seal-impression on wax, 1. any token serving as proof of ident.i.ty 2. guarantee 3. token, esp. of goodwill After Liddell and Scott 1940:167677, without the examples, and with the Greek words for "knucklebone" and "guest-friend" rendered into English.

160. Rotours 1952:6. On fu (or qi, another name for debt tallies that could be used more generally for "tokens") more generally: Rotours 1952, Kaltenmark 1960, Kan 1978, Faure 2000:22129: Falkenhausen 2005.

161. There is a curious tension here: the will of heaven is also in a certain sense the will of the people, and Chinese thinkers varied on where they placed the emphasis. Xunzi, for instance, a.s.sumed that the authority of the king is based on the confidence of the people. He also argued that while confidence among the people is maintained by contracts ensured by the matching of tally sticks, under a truly just king, social trust will be such that such objects will become unnecessary (Roetz 1993:7374).

162. Kohn 2000:330. Similarly in j.a.pan: Faure 2000:227.

163. In the Encyclopedia of Taoism they are described as "diagrams, conceived as a form of celestial writing, that derive their power from the matching celestial counterpart kept by the deities who bestowed them" (Bokenkamp 2008:35). On Taoist fu: Kaltenmark 1960; Seidel 1983; Strickmann 2002:19091; Verellen 2006; on Buddhist parallels, see Faure 1998; Robson 2008.

164. Sa.s.so 1978; the origins of the yin-yang symbol remain obscure and contested but those Sinologists I've consulted find this plausible. The generic word for "symbol" in contemporary Chinese is fuhao, which is directly derived from fu.

165. Insofar as I'm weighing in on the "Why didn't the Islamic world develop modern capitalism?" debate, then, it seems to me that both Udovitch's argument (1975:1921) that the Islamic world never developed impersonal credit mechanisms, and Ray's objection (1997:3940) that the ban on interest and insurance was more important, carry weight. Ray's suggestion that differences in inheritance laws might play a role also deserves investigation.

166. Maitland 1908:54.

167. Davis 1904.

168. In the Platonic sense: just as any particular, physical bird we might happen to see on a nearby fruit tree is merely a token of the general idea of "bird" (which is immaterial, abstract, angelic), so do the various physical, mortal individuals who join together to make up a corporation become an abstract, angelic Idea. Kantorowicz argues that it took a number of intellectual innovations to make the notion of the corporation possible: notably, the idea of the aeon or aevum, eternal time, that is, time that lasts forever, as opposed to the Augustinian eternity which is outside of time entirely and was considered the habitation of the angels, to the revival of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite (1957:28081).

169. Kantorowicz 1957:28283.

170. Islamic law, for instance, not only did not develop the notion of fictive persons, but steadfastly resisted recognizing corporations until quite recently (Kuran 2005).

171. Mainly Randall Collins (1986:5258), who also makes the comparison with China; cf. Coleman 1988.

172. See Nerlich 1987:12124.

Chapter Eleven.

1. On English wages, see Dyer 1989; on English festive life, there is a vast literature, but a good recent source is Humphrey 2001. Silvia Federici (2004) provides a compelling recent synthesis.

2. For a very small sampling of more recent debates over the "price revolution," see Hamilton 1934, Cipolla 1967, Flynn 1982, Goldstone 1984, 1991, Fisher 1989, Munro 2003a, 2007. The main argument is between monetarists who continue to argue that increase in the amount of specie is ultimately responsible for the inflation, and those who emphasize the role of rapid population increase, though most specific arguments are considerably more nuanced.

3. Historians speak of "bullion famines"-as most active mines dried up, such gold and silver that wasn't sucked out of Europe to pay for eastern luxuries was increasingly hidden away, causing all sorts of difficulties for commerce. In the 1460s, the shortage of specie in cities like Lisbon had been so acute that merchant ships visiting with cargoes full of wares often had to return home without selling anything (Spufford 1988:33962).

4. Brook 1998. Needless to say, I'm simplifying enormously: another problem was the growth of landlordism, with many smallholders falling in debt to landlords for inability to pay. As members of the ever-increasing royal family and other favored families gained tax exemptions from the state, the tax burden on smallholders became so heavy that many felt forced to sell their lands to the powerful families in exchange for tenancy agreements to free those lands from taxes.

5. Chinese historians count 77 different "miners' revolts" during the 1430s and '40s (Harrison 1965:1034; cf. Tong 1992:6064; Gernet 1982:414). Between 1445 and 1449 these became a serious threat as silver miners under a rebel leader named Ye Zongliu made common cause with tenant farmers and the urban poor in overpopulated Fujian and Shaxian, sparking an uprising that spread to a number of different provinces, seizing a number of cities and expelling much of the landed gentry.

6. Von Glahn (1996:7082) doc.u.ments the process. Gernet (1982:41516) doc.u.ments how between 1450 and 1500, most taxes became payable in silver. The process culminated in the "single lash of the whip" method: tax reforms put into place between 1530 and 1581 (Huang 1974, see Arrighi, Hui, Hung and Seldon 2003:27273).

7. Wong 1997, Pomeranz 2000, Arrighi 2007, among many others who make this point.

8. Pomeranz 2000:273.

9. The value of silver in China (as measured in gold) remained, through the sixteenth century, roughly twice what it was in Lisbon or Antwerp (Flynn & Giraldez 1995, 2002).

10. von Glahn 1996b:440; Atwell 1998.

11. Chalis 1978:157.

12. China had its own "age of exploration" in the early fifteenth century, but it was not followed by ma.s.s conquest and enslavement.

13. It's possible that they were wrong. Generally populations did decline by 90 percent even in areas where no direct genocide was taking place. But in most places, after a generation or so, populations started recovering; in Hispaniola and many parts of Mexico and Peru, around the mines, the ultimate death rate was more like 100 percent.

14. Todorov 1984:13738; for the original, Icazbalceta 2008:2326.

15. One historian remarks: "By the close of the sixteenth century bullion, primarily silver, made up over 95 percent of all exports leaving Spanish America for Europe. Nearly that same percentage of the indigenous population had been destroyed in the process of seizing those riches" (Stannard 1993:221).

16. Bernal Diaz 1963:43.

17. Bernal Diaz: the quote is a synthesis of the Lockhart translation (1844 II:120) and Cohen translation (1963:412), though these appear to be based on slightly different originals.

18. Bernal Diaz op cit.

19. Cortes 1868:141.

20. Most of the conquistadors had similar stories. Balboa came to the Americas to flee his creditors; Pizarro borrowed so heavily to outfit his expedition to Peru that after early reverses, it was only the fear of debtor's prison that prevented his return to Panama; Francisco de Montejo had to p.a.w.n his entire Mexican possessions for an eight-thousand-peso loan to launch his expedition to Honduras; Pedro de Alvarado too ended up deeply in debt, finally throwing everything into a scheme to conquer the Spice Islands and China-on his death, creditors immediately tried to put his remaining estates to auction.

21. e.g., Pagden 1986.

22. Gibson 1964:253. All this is disturbingly reminiscent of global politics nowadays, in which the United Nations, for example, will urge poor countries to make education free and available to everyone, and then the International Monetary Fund (which is, legally, actually a part of the United Nations) will insist that those same countries do exactly the opposite, imposing school fees as part of broader "economic reforms" as a condition of refinancing the country's loans.

23. Following William Pietz (1985:8), who studied early merchant adventurer's accounts of West Africa; though Todorov (1984:12931) on the very similar perspective of the conquistadors.

24. Some did go bankrupt-for instance, one branch of the Fuggers. But this was surprisingly rare.

25. Martin Luther, Von Kaufshandlung und Wucher, 1524, cited in Nelson 1949:50.

26. In Luther's time the main issue was a practice called Zinskauf, technically rent on leased property, which was basically a disguised form of interest-bearing loan.

27. In Baker 1974:5354. The reference to Paul is in Romans 13:7.

28. He argued that the fact that Deuteronomy allows usury under any circ.u.mstances demonstrates that this could not have been a universal "spiritual law," but was a political law created for the specific ancient Israeli situation, and therefore, that it could be considered irrelevant in different ones.

29. And in fact, this is what "capital" originally meant. The term itself goes back to Latin capitale, which meant "funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money, or money carrying interest" (Braudel 1992:232). It appears in English in the midsixteenth century largely as a term borrowed from Italian bookkeeping techniques (Cannan 1921, Richard 1926) for what remained when one squared property, credits, and debts; though until the nineteenth century, English sources generally preferred the word "stock"-in part, one suspects, because "capital" was so closely a.s.sociated with usury.

30. Nations that, after all, also practiced usury on one another: Nelson 1949:76.

31. Ben Nelson emphasized this in an important book, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood.

32. Midelfort 1996:39.

33. Zmora 2006:68. Public financing at this period largely meant disguised interest-bearing loans from the minor n.o.bility, who were also the stratum from which local administrators were drawn.

34. On church lands: Dixon 2002:91. On Casimir's gambling debts: Janssen 1910 IV:147. His overall debt rose to half a million guilders in 1528, and over three quarters of a million by 1541 (Zmora 2006:13n55.) 35. He was later accused of conspiring with Count Wilhelm von Henneburg, who had gone over to the rebels, to become secular Duke of the territories then held by the Bishop of Wurzburg.

36. From "Report of the Margrave's Commander, Michel Gross from Trock-au," in Scott & Scribner 1991:301. The sums are based on a promise of 1 florin per execution, per mutilation. We do not know if Casimir ever paid this particular debt.

37. For some relevant accounts of the revolt and repression: Seebohm 1877:14145; Janssen 1910 IV:32326; Blickle 1977; Endres 1979; Vice 1988; Robisheaux 1989:4867, Sea 2007. Casimir is said to have ultimately settled into exacting fines, eventually demanding some 104,000 guldens in compensation from his subjects.

38. Linebaugh (2008) makes a beautiful a.n.a.lysis of this sort of phenomenon in his essay on the social origins of the Magna Carta.

39. It is telling that despite the endless reprisals against commoners, none of the German princes or n.o.bility, even those who openly collaborated with the rebels, was held accountable in any way.

40. Muldrew 1993a, 1993b, 1996, 1998, 2001; cf. MacIntosh 1988; Zell 1996, Waswo 2004, Ingram 2006, Valenze 2006, Kitch 2007. I find myself strongly agreeing with most of Muldrew's conclusions, only qualifying some: for instance, his rejection of MacPherson's possessive individualism argument (1962) strikes me as unnecessary, since I suspect that the latter does identify changes that are happening on a deeper structural level less accessible to explicit discourse (see Graeber 1997).

41. Muldrew (2001:92) estimates that in c. 1600, eight thousand London merchants might have possessed as much as one-third of all the cash in England.

42. Williamson 1889; Whiting 1971; Mathias 1979b; Valenze 2006:3440.

43. Gold and silver were a very small part of household wealth: inventories reveal on average fifteen shillings of credit for every one in coin (Muldrew 1998).

44. This principle of a right to livelihood is key to what E.P. Thompson famously called "moral economy of the crowd" (1971) in eighteenth-century England, a notion that Muldrew (1993a) thinks can be applied to these credit systems as a whole.

45. Stout 1742:7475, parts of the same pa.s.sage are cited in Muldrew 1993a:178, and 1998:152.

46. To be more precise, either piety (in the Calvinist case) or good natured sociality (in the case of those that opposed them in the name of older festive values)-in the years before the civil war, many parish governments were divided between the "G.o.dly" and "good honest men" (Hunt 1983:146) 47. Shepherd 2000, Walker 1996; for my own take on "life-cycle service" and wage labor, see, again, Graeber 1997.

48. Hill 1972:3956, Wrightson & Levine 1979, Beier 1985.

49. Muldrew 2001:84.

50. For a cla.s.sic statement on the connection of Tudor markets, festivals, and morality, see Agnew (1986).

51. Johnson 2004:5658. On the two conceptions of justice: Wrightson 1980. Bodin's essay was widely read. It drew on Aquinas' view of love and friendship as prior to the legal order, which, in turn, harkens back to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which reached Europe through Arab sources. Whether there was also a direct influence from the Islamic sources themselves we do not know, but considering the degree of general mutual engagement (Ghazanfar 2003) it seems likely.

52. Gerard de Malynes's Maintenance of Free Trade (1622), cited in Muldrew 1998:98, also Muldrew 2001:83.

53. Chaucer is full of this sort of thing: the Wife of Bath has much to say about conjugal debts (e.g., Cotter 1969). It was really in the period of about 14001600 that everything came to be so framed as debt, presumably reflecting the first stirrings of possessive individualism, and attempts to reconcile it to older moral paradigms. Guth (2008), a legal historian, thus calls these centuries "the age of debt," one which was then replaced after 1600 by an "age of contract."

54. Davenant 1771:152.

55. Marshall Sahlins (1996, 2008) has been emphasizing the theological roots of Hobbes for some time. Much of the following a.n.a.lysis draws on his influence.

56. Hobbes himself doesn't use the term "self-interest" but does speak of "particular," "private," and "common" interests.

57. De L'Esprit 53, cited in Hirschman 1986:45. Exploring the contrast between Shang's "profit" and Helvetius' "interest" would be a telling history in itself. They are not the same concept.