F rancesca T rivellato . The Promise and Peril of Credit

In this enthralling and incisive study, The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society, Francesca Trivellato takes as her goal the elucidation of early modern concepts of commercial activity—more specifically, of the moral and ethical borders of the credit market. She does so through a close analysis of how various economic authors picked up and retold one particular legend, that of the Jewish invention of the bill of exchange. By tracing its transmission and reception over a period of two and a half centuries, starting from the mid-seventeenth century, she succeeds in demonstrating not just what past generations thought about economic issues but also, quite remarkably, how they thought about them. The key element in the argument is, not surprisingly, the fact that the legend dealt with Jews and their economic untrustworthiness. This allows...

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Art history · Element (criminal law) · Judaism · Legend · Period (music) · Political science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law