The poverty of disaster : debt and insecurity in eighteenth-century Britain / Tawny Paul.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Paul, K. Tawny, 1982- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in early modern British history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Debt, Imprisonment for--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Debt, Imprisonment for.

Debt--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Debt.

Middle class--Great Britain--Economic conditions--18th century.

Middle class.

Financial security--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Financial security.

Poverty--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Poverty.

History.

Economic conditions.

Great Britain--Economic conditions--18th century.

Great Britain.

Economic history.

Middle class--Economic conditions.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 285 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Summary:

Eighteenth-century Britain is often understood as a time of commercial success, economic growth, and improving living standards. Yet during this period, tens of thousands of men and women were imprisoned for failing to pay their debts. The Poverty of Disaster tells their stories, focusing on the experiences of the middle classes who enjoyed opportunities for success on one hand, but who also faced the prospect of downward social mobility. Tawny Paul examines the role that debt insecurity played within society and the fragility of the credit relations that underpinned commercial activity, livelihood, and social status. She demonstrates how, for the middle classes, insecurity took economic, social, and embodied forms. It shaped the work that people did, their social status, their sense of self, their bodily autonomy, and their relationships with others. In an era of growing debt and the squeeze of the middle class, The Poverty of Disaster offers a new history of capitalism and takes a long view of the financial insecurities that plague our own uncertain times.

Contents:

The scale of incarceration : debt and the middling sort

Credit and the economic structures of insecurity

Social structures of insecurity

Keeping in credit : reputation and gender

Occupational identities and the precariousness of work

Punishing the body : harm and the coercive nature of credit

The worth of bodies : debt bondage, value and selfhood.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781108496940

1108496946

OCLC:

1121100627