Property and Credit: A Legal and Economic History

Abstract

Many legal historians engage in various forms of critique of capitalism and Western colonialism. Very few actually study capitalism from the inside, addressing questions related to capital accumulation, financial institutions, entrepreneurs, or business corporations. Fewer still scrutinize, from the inside, the connections between capitalism and colonialism, by studying global trade, capital flows, the City of London, or multinationals. Some of the historians who have been attracted to these internal issues in recent years and identify themselves as new historians of capitalism avoid economic history and economic theory, it would seem, due to ideological hostility, ignorance, or a lack of the specific competencies required in these realms. Few of these historians pay attention to law. But the group of scholars who are involved in what I term legal-economic history—historians who are willing to tackle the details of legal doctrines and institutions, on the one hand, and draw on economic history literature and insights from economic theory, on the other—is markedly small. I can think of fewer than a dozen such active legal-economic historians. Claire Priest is one of these exceptional few. She does legal-economic history of the kind I appreciate and aim to do myself. In Credit Nation, she employs economic history literature and engages with economic historians.