Credit, Solidarity Networks and the Rural Poor in Preindustrial France

This chapter examines how and why the rural poor used credit in preindustrial France. The absence of landed guarantees to secure loans did not exclude the poor from the local credit market. In the eighteenth century, they could borrow to alleviate a shortage of cash and defer payment for the purchase of foodstuffs, items of necessity and services. This chapter uses a sample of probate inventories collected in the south of Alsace for the period 1770–1790. Probates allow for a reconstruction of credit patterns and networks. Far from being excluded from credit, the poor were fully part of a network of solidarity.