A History of the Credit Market is a collection of essays dealing with the organization and functioning of credit markets between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Central Europe, an economic area whose financial activity is known to us mostly through the pioneering work of von Stromer and the more recent contributions of Denzel and Weissen. More could have been expected from this book, despite the unavoidable challenges of edited volumes—especially when they contain as many contributions as this one, with twenty-one chapters.
In the introduction, Roman Zaoral evokes a series of issues related to early modern finance, such as the relationship between urbanization, public finances, and state formation, with references to the works of Stasavage and Blockmans, or the occurrence of financial crisis at the governmental level (Bonney, Van Uytven). The links between these theories of Western Europe's economic development and the content of the present book is not explicit. Zaoral then offers an overview of the existing literature on Central European credit markets in Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian, which would otherwise remain inaccessible to many historians due to language barriers. Unfortunately, the survey is too brief to provide a real grasp of the content of many of these works. The book itself contains new and rich material on credit markets but does not qualify as a comprehensive study in the sense of providing a critical synthesis of the subject matter.
The first section is devoted to royal finances and includes contributions on Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and Austria in the late Middle Ages. Some contributions focus on specific financial instruments such as pledges, mortgages, and loans (Weisz, Incze, Guzowski), while others explore the difficulties inherent to royal finances (Žalud) and the role of particular groups of creditors (Brugger). The second section of the book focuses on nongovernmental credit markets in the cities of Bohemia, the Baltic coast, Hungary, Poland, and Austria. Pátková's chapter lists the sources available for the study of debts and loans in late medieval Czech towns. The identity of creditors and debtors and the types of financial instruments in use are the principal objects of the other contributions, some of which focus on rents (Kardasz, Klír), others on annuities (Łozowski) or deposits (Buňatová). One chapter deals with rural credit and more specifically the countryside's access to the town's credit market in Eger city state (Klír).
The different authors each have their own approach although recurrent themes appear, such as the legal framework of trade, the social background of participants, the limited availability of banking institutions, and the absence of dynamic secondary markets. The third and last part of the book is supposed to deal with the economic and sociopolitical consequences of debts and loans but contains contributions which are more interested in other topics, such as the influence of religion on the use of credit (Liedke and Guzowski), the administration of the chamber estates (Vlasáková) or the activities of individual merchants (Orłowska).
Although the contributions are unequal in terms of their length and the depth of archival research they offer, they are overall largely descriptive. The book suffers from careless writing in places, which complicates the reading. Several essays mention specific financial instruments without detailing their functioning in a given context, which results in terms such as pledges or rents apparently meaning different things to different authors, which may create confusion for the reader.
While the overarching theme of credit markets in Central Europe is very broad, no attempt is made at problematizing this object of inquiry in any part of the book. Important questions are not tackled, such as the reasons for the contrasts observed between Central Europe and Western Europe, the implications of the differentiated use of financial instruments by various social groups in different contexts, or the question of the overall growth of credit markets in Central Europe during the late Middle Ages. While some events and characters come back throughout the different chapters, such as the limitation of the maximum interest rate by Charles V in 1543 or the role of Jews in credit markets, no attempt is made at highlighting or exploring any transversal theme. This impression is accentuated by the absence of a conclusion. In my view, the volume is not made to be read at once, but selected chapters may be of interest to specialists, especially for the archival material they uncover.
