International Conference: Mountain Entrepreneurs – Generations and Transformations (1740–1830)

University of Vienna, 14-15 September 2023

Organisers: Margareth Lanzinger, Jon Mathieu (Luzern), Juan Hernandez Franco (Murcia), Antonio Irigoyen (Murcia), and Ana Zabalza (Navarra)

Programme
Announcement

 International Workshop: Debt - the Good, the Bad and the Hidden. Bringing Family, Kin, Commerce and Consumption Debts Together

Vienna, Thu-Sat 15–17 September 2022

In this workshop we would like to address aspects concerning socio-economic practices around debts. We are particularly interested in opportunities and risks people took with secured and unsecured, short-term and long-term debts, and in the resulting balancing acts. First, we want to examine forms and logics of incurring debts, whether debts were formally or informally documented and if and how they were brokered. Regarding different kinds or agreements we will chart the effects of (life) annuities, mortgage debts, pledges and guarantees. Second, looking at specific stipulations we want to find out whether dates of repayments and/or interest rate payments were settled; whether universal or specific hypothecary securitization was common; whether lending was for investments, for consumption or repayment of other debts. Third, in terms of personal relationships we examine possibilities and problems connected with lending inside and outside family and kin. Finally, we ask what modes of repayment and/or restructuring of debt – via exchange, purchase, etc. – can be traced in the sources.

Particular focus will be placed on inheritance shares, marriage portions or dowries as debts and their effects: how were such family debts carried further and how were they transferred? Were they paid out and if so how? What consequences did they have compared to other debts? Who was liable for which debts? What gender-specific impact does this question have? It is our goal to look at family debt – often ‘hidden’ or underestimated in historiography – in conjunction with commercial and consumer debt.

Programme (PDF)

Conference report (H-Soz-Kult)

6th Annual Conference of the Working Group: “Materielle Kultur und Konsum in der Vormoderne”"

Date: Thu-Sat 7-9 July 2022

Location: Alte Kapelle, Campus University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 2-4, 1090 Vienna

Languages: German and English

Organisation: Aris Kafantogias, Janine Maegraith (both Department for Economic and Social History), Henning Bovenkerk (Uni Münster), Manuel Mozer (Uni Tübingen)

Programme (pdf)

Conference report (H-Soz-Kult)

 Published recently:

Margareth Lanzinger (ed.)

"Formen des Kredits"

Special issue, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 70, 1 (2022).

 Published recently:

Margareth Lanzinger and Janine Maegraith (eds.),

"Mobile Land"

Special issue, The History of the Family 27, 1 (2022).

 Published recently:

Siglinde Clementi and Margareth Lanzinger (eds.),

„Der letzte Wille“

Special issue of Historische Anthropologie 29, 3 (2021), with contributions from the project workshop „Der letzte Wille. Norm und Praxis des Testierens in der Neuzeit“ | „L'ultima volontà. Norma e pratica delle disposizioni testamentarie in età moderna“, in cooperation with the Competence Centre for Regional History, Free University of Bolzano, 19 October 2018.

 Published recently:

 Benedetta Borello and Margareth Lanzinger (eds.),

„Open Kinship“

Special issue of Quaderni storici 165, 3 (2020), with contributions from the closing conference „Open Kinship? Social and Legal Practices from Gender Perspectives (1450–1900)“, University of Vienna, 26–28 September 2019.

 Recently published

Margareth Lanzinger, Janine Maegraith, Siglinde Clementi, Ellinor Forster, und Christian Hagen (Hg.),

Negotiations of Gender and Property through Legal Regimes (14th-19th Century). Stipulating, Litigating, Mediating

This volume explores familial wealth arrangements and gendered property from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries in Italian, German and Austrian territories (including Florence, Trento, Tyrol, and Vienna), Nordic countries, Western Pyrenees, and England. Family property as capital in the form of houses, land, movables, financial assets, and rights were of great importance in the past. Arrangements of such property were characterised by a high degree of negotiating competence but likewise they entailed competition between the parties involved and were highly conflict prone. Fifteen contributors from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK address different marital property regimes in relation to the practices and legal regulations of inheritance patterns with consideration to inter-familial negotiation, conflict, and resolution.