Rents instead of land. Credit and peasant indebtedness in late medieval Mediterranean Iberia: the kingdom of Valencia

Abstract

Abstract The literature on the rural economy of the high and late Middle Ages has long established a close correlation between three significant features of the period: the spread of rural credit, the dynamism of the peasant land market and the expropriation of peasant land by the creditors, usually yeomen or urban landowners. There has even been talk for some countries (northern Italy) of a deliberate strategy of territorial conquest, insofar as the credit provided by urban lenders would aim at the expropriation of land from insolvent debtors. This article studies for the Mediterranean Spain of the late Middle Ages, and in particular for the old kingdom of Valencia, other objectives of rural credit and other alternatives to peasant expropriation in case of insolvency. Based on the rich archival holdings of the region, mainly notarial and judicial records, the article studies the dissemination of rural credit, the different modalities (short and long term), the motivations of creditors and debtors, the types of interest, the guarantors and the goods given as collateral for the loans, their confiscation in case of delay or insolvency. It concludes that, unlike elsewhere, the creditors, rather than in land, were interested in rents, that is, in the annuities paid to them by the debtors as interest on the loans obtained. The spread of long-term credit, therefore, not only did not threaten or subvert but also strengthened a system of land ownership, tenure and management based on regular rents extraction.