Analyses how bankruptcy was litigated within the court to gain a more nuanced understanding of early modern bankruptcy. This book examines cases involving bankr

What the loans and defaults of a sixteenth-century Spanish king can tell us about sovereign debt today Why do lenders time and again loan money to sovereign bor

After more than one hundred years of statehood, most African countries are still facing serious challenges of political instability, low growth, underdevelopmen

The book is the first full analysis of the gentry in the early modern period since G.E.Mingay The Gentry: the Rise and Fall of a Ruling Class (1976). It offers

Throughout the eighteenth century hundreds of thousands of men and women were cast into prison for failing to pay their debts. This apparently illogical system