The Other Fundamental Problem of Exchange: Mortgages, Defaults and Debtor Protection in Sixteenth-Century Holland

Jaco Zuijderduijn ()

Chapter Chapter 11 in Land and Credit, 2018, pp 281-307 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Mortgages, defaults and foreclosures of real estate have often been linked to the decline of peasant smallholding, and the rise of commercial farms run by townsmen and operated by landless labourers. However, little is known of how mortgage law was applied in practice. This chapter presents a case study, focusing on villagers who lost real estate during the process of expropriation for debt. It finds that there were large differences between the legal rights creditors held to pursue their debtors and their ability to enforce these rights. This was due to two characteristics of mortgage contracts: first, judges in local law courts had to authorize foreclosure, and as a result the execution of mortgage law was at their discretion. Second, judges looking to apply leniency were helped by the fact that mortgage contracts usually contained both a special and general mortgage. This allowed judges to allow only seizure of movables, thus preventing large-scale expropriation of real estate. As a result, the number of foreclosures of real estate was rather modest and expropriation was mainly applied in exceptional circumstances, such as debtors fleeing their creditors.

Keywords: Debtor Protection; General Mortgage; Mortgage Contract; Hypotheca; Gerrit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-319-66209-1_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783319662091

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-66209-1_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().