Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

NOTES 445
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 1974:53-54. The reference
to Paul is in Romans 13:7.
28. He argued that the fact that Deuteronomy
allows usury under any circumstances
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" (Braude!
1992:232). It appears in English in the
mid-sixteenth 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 associated 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 2006:8. Public financing
at this period largely meant disguised
interest-bearing loans from the minor nobility,
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
20o6:r3n55.)
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 Trockau,"
in Scott & Scribner 1991:301. The
sums are based on a promise of r florin
per execution, \lz per mutilation. We do
not know if Casimir ever paid this particular
debt.
37· For some relevant accounts of the
revolt and repression: Seebohm 1877:141-
45; Janssen 1910 IV:323-26; Blickle 1977;
Endres 1979; Vice 1988; Robisheaux
1989:48-67, Sea 2007. Casimir is said to
have ultimately settled into exacting fines,
eventually demanding some I04,ooo guldens
in compensation from his subjects.
38. Linebaugh (2oo8) makes a beautiful
analysis 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 nobility, even those
who openly collaborated with the rebels,
was held accountable in any way.
40. Muldrew 1993a, 1993b, 1996, 1998,
2oor; cf. Macintosh 1988; Zell 1996, Waswo
2004, Ingram 2oo6, Valenze 2oo6,
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. r6oo, eight thousand London merchants
might have possessed as much as
one-third of all the cash in England.
42. Williamson r889; Whiting 1971;
Mathias 1979b; Valenze 2oo6:34-40.