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Tawny Paul discusses the 18th-century Britain reality of economic insecurity

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 16, 2024

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The speaker expresses interest in studying the economy from a social perspective, emphasizing that the economy is intertwined with everyday life rather than an abstract concept. They focus specifically on the themes of debt and credit, particularly in the 18th century when many individuals were both debtors and creditors due to insufficient cash flow, relying on personal relationships for credit rather than formal financial institutions.

The speaker's research led them to explore debtor prison records, revealing that a significant number of people, including many members of the middle class, faced imprisonment due to debt. This video challenges the perception of the economy as primarily a space of positive social relations; instead, it reveals that indebtedness often resulted in loss of liberty and societal violence.

The notion of the middle class during this period is further scrutinized, highlighting their precarious existence despite being perceived as economically and culturally powerful. Many individuals were at risk of falling into debt and ending up imprisoned, suggesting that the middle class was characterized by insecurity rather than stability.

The speaker notes the legal context in which debtor's prisons operated, explaining that creditors could incarcerate debtors before a court ruling, which reflects a more vindictive approach to debt enforcement. They also examine the gender dynamics, pointing out that while the majority of those imprisoned were men, women played a significant role as creditors, challenging traditional views of financial agency.

Finally, the speaker argues that their research offers insights into how class dynamics are understood and the insecurities faced by the middle class, suggesting parallels with contemporary societal issues. They conclude that the 18th-century middle class was defined not only by its aspirations but also by its vulnerabilities, which shaped behaviors and societal interactions.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Social Perspective on Economy**: The author emphasizes the importance of understanding the economy not just as an abstract system but as an integral part of everyday life, particularly focusing on the roles of debt and credit in the 18th century. This period saw a majority of people engaging in credit-based transactions without formal financial intermediaries, relying instead on trust within their local communities.

2. **Debt and Imprisonment**: The author discovered a troubling aspect of the credit system, including the high prevalence of debtors ending up in prison. This situation revealed a more violent and precarious reality than the commonly perceived notion that credit fostered positive social relations and trust among community members.

3. **Challenges to Traditional Views of the Middle Class**: The research challenges the perception of the emerging middle class in the 18th century as being economically and politically powerful. Instead, it illustrates that many individuals considered middle class lived in insecurity, with a significant portion facing the threat of debtors' prison, which undermined the notion of their stability and prosperity.

4. **Legal Convideo of Debt and Gender Dynamics**: The author highlights how 18th-century laws around property ownership affected gender roles, noting that men were primarily held legally accountable for debts, leading to a higher representation of men in debtors' prisons. This legal framework emphasizes the household's collective responsibility for debts, complicating traditional notions of individualism in economic behavior.

5. **Class Insecurity and Historical Relevance**: The discussion connects historical class dynamics to present-day concerns, particularly regarding the insecurity often felt by individuals identifying as middle class. The video posits that the insecurities experienced by the 18th-century middle class are echoed in contemporary society, suggesting that historical insights can help convideoualize modern economic behaviors and perceptions of class.

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Here are some key quotes from the video that encapsulate the main ideas discussed:

1. **Interest in Social Perspective of Economy:**
- "I'm really interested in studying the economy from a social perspective. I don't see the economy and the history of the economy as something that kind of exists in an abstract way. I think it's the stuff of our everyday life."

2. **Credit and Debt in Everyday Life:**
- "I was interested in thinking about debt and credit in particular, which is an area that a lot of historians were really excited about at the time in the 18th century, most people were in debt, and most people were also creditors."

3. **Personal Relationships in Credit Transactions:**
- "If you were a normal person in the 18th century, you would rely on credit from your local shopkeeper, from your neighbor. Maybe your neighbor was your shopkeeper."

4. **Trust and Social Reputation:**
- "There was this element of trust... I’m gonna trust you with credit because I know that you're an upstanding person."

5. **Challenges of Personal Relationships:**
- "This is a space where we're seeing some violence and we're seeing... people losing their liberty over the fact that they've gone into debt."

6. **Middle Class and Precariousness:**
- "What my research shows is that they were actually quite precarious. Something like one in three members of the middle class... end up in prison during their lifetimes."

7. **Debt and Incarceration in the 18th Century:**
- "Debtor's prison was the result of a civil process... [creditors] could pursue them in court... you could take their body."

8. **Social and Economic Insecurities:**
- "If that threat is constantly looming over you... you would feel quite insecure."

9. **Gender and Debt Dynamics:**
- "When we think about debt and credit and finances in this period, not as belonging to individuals but households."

10. **Men's Role and Emotional Connections:**
- "We see men... operating around the debtor prison being quite emotional in their decisions. There's a lot of reason to suggest... it wasn't just a rational kind of thing."

11. **Insights on Class:**
- "The idea that the middle class kind of has insecurity based into it."

12. **Impact of Historical Convideo on Present:**
- "I think this is one of these moments where history is quite useful to us in the present... many who consider themselves middle class today feel quite insecure, even if they don't necessarily look... this was formed in a very insecure way."

These quotes illustrate the author’s nuanced exploration of the economic relationships and the social dynamics that characterized the 18th-century economy, particularly focusing on debt, trust, social relations, and the nature of the emerging middle class.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:90000

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I'm really interested in studying the economy

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from a social perspective.

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Um, and what I mean by that is that I don't see the economy

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and the history of the economy as something that kind

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of exists in an abstract way.

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I think it's the stuff of our everyday life.

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Um, so I was interested in thinking about debt

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and credit in particular, which is an area that a lot

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of historians were really excited about at the time

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in the 18th century, most people were in debt,

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and most people were also creditors

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because there wasn't enough cash in circulation.

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So all of the economic transactions that are part

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of everyday life were done using credit.

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And there weren't financial intermediaries like banks.

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So when people had to get credit, they relied on each other.

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Um, so if you were a normal person in the 18th century,

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you would rely on credit from your local

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shopkeeper, from your neighbor.

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Maybe your neighbor was your shopkeeper.

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Um, and we think about these relationships

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as being quite social in nature,

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because people knew one another,

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and there was this element of trust, you know,

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so if I'm a shopkeeper, I'm gonna trust you with credit

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because I know that you're an upstanding person, trust,

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you know, no matter what your

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material circumstances look like, that you have the kind

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of social reputation that you'll, you'll pay me back.

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Um, so I was interested in looking into that kind of world.

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And then, like many research projects,

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this happened a bit by accident.

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I was in the archive in Edinburgh at the National Archive.

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I was interested in looking at the debtor prison records

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there, thinking that I would look at them

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kind of against the grain.

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In other words, I'd be looking at debt relationship

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to figure out how people related

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to one another through credit.

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And instead, what I found was this incredibly

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common in institution, and that, you know, thousands

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and thousands and thousands of people were going into debt

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and ending up in prison.

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And I started to think, huh,

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this is a little bit different than

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how we thought about the economy, is this kind of,

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polite, positive, you know, space where people get along

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and they help each other out.

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This is a space where we're seeing some violence

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and we're seeing, you know,

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people losing their liberty over the fact

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that they've gone into debt.

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Um, so it makes me start

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to think about things a little bit differently.

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And really, one thing led to another and, and,

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and that's the perspective that I, that I ended up taking.

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I think the challenges that really in, in two ways.

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First of all, the economy is,

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is often thought about in this period is being,

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something that generated positive social relations, right?

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So if it was all about trust, you know,

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you would trust your neighbor with credit,

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and you wanted your neighbor to not go into, you know, debt

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or to fail because that might impact you.

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And so these kind of bonds of reciprocal obligation develop

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that really form the glue of society.

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And so I started to think, well, actually,

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these are not very positive bonds.

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These, these, can be quite negative interactions.

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That's one way in which it challenges things.

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But, it also really challenged

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how we think about the middle class.

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This is the period when the middle class

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was kind of invented.

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Um, this is the period of economic growth in Britain

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and period of empire.

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Um, and the Midling classes,

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or the midling sorts, as they would've called themselves,

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were people who sat at the center of the developing economy.

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So think about your shopkeepers, your trade people,

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your merchants, professionals like lawyers, you know,

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who had a role in developing capitalism as well.

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Um, this class started to grow,

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and we often think of them as being very powerful,

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being economically powerful,

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because they're, they're related

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to all this economic growth, culturally powerful.

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They were the friend setters, the peace makers

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of the 18th century.

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You know, when we think about consumer revolution

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and fashion, these were the people

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who were really at the center of that.

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And they were politically powerful.

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They were the people who held political office,

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especially at the very local, level.

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So we think about this middle class is rising, you know,

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as being quite successful.

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And what my research shows is that

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they were actually quite precarious.

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Something like one in three members of the middle class

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would end up in better prisons during their lifetime.

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And so most people were really sitting at this nice edge

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between success

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and failure rather than people, who

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were very prosperous debtor's.

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Prison was the result of a civil process.

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And that's really important to remember

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because when we think about incarceration today,

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it's associated more with, criminal proceedings

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In the 18th century, and even well

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before that, if you were a creditor

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and your debtor failed to pay, you had a couple of options.

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You could pursue them in court

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and you could, if the debt was proven,

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end up taking their thing or you could take their body.

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Um, and taking their body meant putting them in prison.

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The kind of legal theory behind it is that you could

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put a person in prison, keep them from absconding,

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because what might happen in this period is if someone

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fell too far c debt, they would just leave.

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And because that was held with your person, if someone left,

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the chances of getting, finding them

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and getting repaid were quite, were quite low.

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Um, so the, the theory is you put someone in prison

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and you keep them from leaving,

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and that way you get your debt paid back in practice,

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this turned out to be a much more kind of,

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vindictive, threat that was used against debtors.

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And so creditors might put their debtors in prison

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to force them to pay, to provide, a very,

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very like physical incentive, for them

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to honor their obligations.

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And so,

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because this was such a prevalent way of behaving, you know,

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one in three, middling men end up in, in prison

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during their lifetimes, you can think about

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how the economy might have felt to people at the time.

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Like if you were a trades person,

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stances are either you would've ended up in prison

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during your life at some point,

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or you would have known someone who did.

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And so if that threat is constantly looming over you

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think about how you might behave

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and think about how you might feel,

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you would feel quite insecure.

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And you might not only feel insecure financially,

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but you would feel insecure physically if your body

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was threatened with, being, being shoved in a prison.

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There are some big differences in how prison operated within

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the system of debt enforcement.

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Um, primarily the difference is that in England,

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a person could be put into prison

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before the debt even went into the court.

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Um, it, there's a process called the the mean process.

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Um, and the idea was that you needed to be able

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to put your debtor in prison, really, really quickly

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because they might have gone if you, if you didn't.

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And so therefore there was this kind of shortcut.

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There was this legal shortcut, by contrast in Scotland,

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there,

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was a longer more protracted legal process

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that was necessary to get people incarcerated.

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Um, so that's the main, that's the main difference.

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I have to say though, I think sometimes, you know,

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the differences between England

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and Scotland get a little bit overblown,

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and they're, you know,

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they're treated in very different terms by the 18th century.

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Both masons are part of Great Britain, right?

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And there's, a lot of trade across the border.

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There's a lot of cultural influence across the border.

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And so my approach was really not to treat them separately,

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but to think about them as places generating different types

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of records, which would give me different perspectives,

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but which were part of a more common culture of that.

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In my book, I really think about gender predominantly

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through the lens of masculinity.

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Sometimes when we say gender, we're kind of,

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using gender as shorthand for female experiences,

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but men have a gender also

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and that gender impacts their behavior.

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So because of legal, well,

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because of laws around property ownership at the time,

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laws of ture women who married lost the ability

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to own their own property, essentially, you know, with, with

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some kind of, you know, specific nuances.

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Um, when a woman married, her husband became the owner of,

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of her property, what that meant was

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that men were also then responsible for debt.

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And it's important that we think about debt and credit

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and finances in this period, not as belonging

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to individuals but households.

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So everyone in the household is, you know,

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involved in this credit debt system,

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but the male head of household is the one

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who is legally responsible.

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His name is on it. And so

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because of that, the majority of, people

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who ended up in debt prison were men.

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That doesn't mean that it's

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because women weren't financial actors.

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It's just this legal setting that, that that leads to this.

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Um, and so, this is impacting

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men's physical liberty a little bit more than it's impacting

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women's physical liberty.

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Um, and because of the way that people behaved around

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debt, it challenges this group

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of rational economic man that we have for the 18th century.

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So the way, the way

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that most people think about this is via Adam Smith, right?

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Um, and people framed this before Adam Smith,

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but it's kind of the Smith group, right?

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That, people were rational economic actors.

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They were very individualistic,

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and they made decisions based on

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what would benefit them materially.

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Um, and then these ideas

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of rational economic acting get pinned to masculinity.

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What do I mean by that? Well, we kind of get this separation

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where we see men as framed as, you know,

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rational, as independent as self-serving,

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and women as being more socially connected

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and more emotional and connected to the households.

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Well, the work that I've done totally undermines that

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because we see men operating

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around the debtor prison being quite

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emotional in their decisions.

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There's a lot of reason to suggest

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that putting someone in prison if they owed you a debt

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wasn't just a rational kind of thing.

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You might get paid back,

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but in many cases you wouldn't get paid back.

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And because there's this underlying relationship

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of social trust underneath debt, men were very angry.

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Um, and this could be a really emotional move

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to put someone in in prison.

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So you see people not acting, men, not acting according

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to these kind of masculine ideals.

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Um, at the same time, you know, you see, women not

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as being more socially connected as more empathetic.

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Um, women had a larger role

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as creditors putting people in prison than they had

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as prisoners themselves.

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So we see women acting quite often at, in

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that very brutal kind of way, using the prison as a way

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to enforce economic contracts, thinking about

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how the middle class was constructed,

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how we think about the middle class.

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Um, and class is a big deal right now.

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I think this is one of these, one of these moments

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where history is quite useful to us in, in the present.

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You know, especially, given recent American elections,

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we know that people of the middle classes,

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voted in a way that maybe, may be surprised,

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some of us.

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Um, so this provides an opportunity to think about

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how individuals have behaved according to their class

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and how we might think about classes as, as historians.

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Um, so, you know, first of all, the idea that

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the middle class kind of has insecurity based into it.

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Many people who, who consider themselves middle class today

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feel quite insecure, even if they don't necessarily look

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insecure,

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and a lot of their behavior is,

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is really informed by that insecurity.

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Well, that's not kind of a 20th century thing

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or 21st century thing.

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When the middle class was formed,

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it was formed in a very insecure way.

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Um, and it was something that was open

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to constant negotiation rather than

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something that was stable.

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We know about that. If we look at wealth patterns,

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among the, the middling sorts, you know,

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that over generations,

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families were unlikely to maintain their wealth.

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Many of them fell. Um, we know that

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by looking at these incarceration rates, you know,

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that many people who looked like the successful,

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economic, entrepreneurs

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of the age were actually right on this knife edge

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between being successful and falling in p debt

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and ending up, in, in prison.

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And we know that how they dealt with the burdens

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of precariousness, informs

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how they saw themselves,

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or how they saw themselves informs how they dealt

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with the burdens of precariousness.

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In other words, when we think about class,

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oftentimes we think about people defining themselves

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according to those above them or those below them.

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So think about like keeping up with the Kardashians, right?

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Um, you know, you wanna try to kind of consume

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and be glamorous,

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and look like people who have more wealth than you do,

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or maybe you wanna not fall.

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So you're defining yourself against people below you.

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So during the 18th century, people were not just looking

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above and not just looking below, but they were seeking to

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Shift, shifting the burdens of precariousness sideways.

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So if you were in debt

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and you were threatened by your creditor,

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you might put your neighbor

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or your friend another middling person in prison in order

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to get that debt back in order to protect yourself

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and to protect what it meant to be a person

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of the middle class.

Exploring 18th Century Economy: Debt, Trust, and Social Relations

00:00:00 - I'm really interested in studying the economy from a social perspective. and what I mean by that is that I don't see the economy and the history of the economy as something that kind of exists in an abstract way. I think it's the stuff of our everyday life. so I was interested in thinking about debt and credit in particular, which is an area that a lot of historians were really excited about at the time in the 18th century, most people were in debt, and most people were also creditors

00:00:34 - So all of the economic transactions that are part of everyday life were done using credit. And there weren't financial intermediaries like banks. So when people had to get credit, they relied on each other. so if you were a normal person in the 18th century, you would rely on credit from your local shopkeeper, from your neighbor. Maybe your neighbor was your shopkeeper. and we think about these relationships

00:01:03 - because people knew one another, and there was this element of trust, you know, so if I'm a shopkeeper, I'm gonna trust you with credit because I know that you're an upstanding person, trust, you know, no matter what your material circumstances look like, that you have the kind of social reputation that you'll, you'll pay me back. so I was interested in looking into that kind of world. And then, like many research projects, this happened a bit by accident. I was in the archive in Edinburgh at the National Archive.

Debt and Its Discontents: Unraveling Social Trust and Insecurity

00:01:38 - there, thinking that I would look at them kind of against the grain. In other words, I'd be looking at debt relationship to figure out how people related to one another through credit. And instead, what I found was this incredibly common in institution, and that, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of people were going into debt and ending up in prison. And I started to think, huh, this is a little bit different than

00:02:12 - polite, positive, you know, space where people get along and they help each other out. This is a space where we're seeing some violence and we're seeing, you know, people losing their liberty over the fact that they've gone into debt. so it makes me start to think about things a little bit differently. And really, one thing led to another and, and, and that's the perspective that I, that I ended up taking. I think the challenges that really in, in two ways.

00:02:43 - is often thought about in this period is being, something that generated positive social relations, right? So if it was all about trust, you know, you would trust your neighbor with credit, and you wanted your neighbor to not go into, you know, debt or to fail because that might impact you. And so these kind of bonds of reciprocal obligation develop that really form the glue of society. And so I started to think, well, actually,

Reassessing Middle Class Dynamics in 18th Century Britain

00:03:11 - These, these, can be quite negative interactions. That's one way in which it challenges things. But, it also really challenged how we think about the middle class. This is the period when the middle class was kind of invented. this is the period of economic growth in Britain and period of empire. and the Midling classes, or the midling sorts, as they would've called themselves,

00:03:44 - So think about your shopkeepers, your trade people, your merchants, professionals like lawyers, you know, who had a role in developing capitalism as well. this class started to grow, and we often think of them as being very powerful, being economically powerful, because they're, they're related to all this economic growth, culturally powerful. They were the friend setters, the peace makers of the 18th century.

00:04:14 - and fashion, these were the people who were really at the center of that. And they were politically powerful. They were the people who held political office, especially at the very local, level. So we think about this middle class is rising, you know, as being quite successful. And what my research shows is that they were actually quite precarious. Something like one in three members of the middle class

Debt, Incarceration, and Social Insecurity in the 18th Century

00:04:46 - And so most people were really sitting at this nice edge between success and failure rather than people, who were very prosperous debtor's. Prison was the result of a civil process. And that's really important to remember because when we think about incarceration today, it's associated more with, criminal proceedings In the 18th century, and even well before that, if you were a creditor

00:05:19 - You could pursue them in court and you could, if the debt was proven, end up taking their thing or you could take their body. and taking their body meant putting them in prison. The kind of legal theory behind it is that you could put a person in prison, keep them from absconding, because what might happen in this period is if someone fell too far c debt, they would just leave.

00:05:48 - the chances of getting, finding them and getting repaid were quite, were quite low. so the, the theory is you put someone in prison and you keep them from leaving, and that way you get your debt paid back in practice, this turned out to be a much more kind of, vindictive, threat that was used against debtors. And so creditors might put their debtors in prison

Debt and Insecurity: The Perils of 18th Century Financial Obligations

00:06:21 - very like physical incentive, for them to honor their obligations. And so, because this was such a prevalent way of behaving, you know, one in three, middling men end up in, in prison during their lifetimes, you can think about how the economy might have felt to people at the time. Like if you were a trades person, stances are either you would've ended up in prison

00:06:51 - or you would have known someone who did. And so if that threat is constantly looming over you think about how you might behave and think about how you might feel, you would feel quite insecure. And you might not only feel insecure financially, but you would feel insecure physically if your body was threatened with, being, being shoved in a prison. There are some big differences in how prison operated within

00:07:23 - primarily the difference is that in England, a person could be put into prison before the debt even went into the court. it, there's a process called the the mean process. and the idea was that you needed to be able to put your debtor in prison, really, really quickly because they might have gone if you, if you didn't. And so therefore there was this kind of shortcut.

Legal Processes and Gender Dynamics in 18th Century Economy

00:07:55 - there, was a longer more protracted legal process that was necessary to get people incarcerated. so that's the main, that's the main difference. I have to say though, I think sometimes, you know, the differences between England and Scotland get a little bit overblown, and they're, you know, they're treated in very different terms by the 18th century.

00:08:26 - And there's, a lot of trade across the border. There's a lot of cultural influence across the border. And so my approach was really not to treat them separately, but to think about them as places generating different types of records, which would give me different perspectives, but which were part of a more common culture of that. In my book, I really think about gender predominantly through the lens of masculinity. Sometimes when we say gender, we're kind of,

00:08:57 - but men have a gender also and that gender impacts their behavior. So because of legal, well, because of laws around property ownership at the time, laws of ture women who married lost the ability to own their own property, essentially, you know, with, with some kind of, you know, specific nuances. when a woman married, her husband became the owner of,

Debt Dynamics: Gender Roles in 18th Century Financial Responsibility

00:09:30 - that men were also then responsible for debt. And it's important that we think about debt and credit and finances in this period, not as belonging to individuals but households. So everyone in the household is, you know, involved in this credit debt system, but the male head of household is the one who is legally responsible. His name is on it. And so because of that, the majority of, people who ended up in debt prison were men.

00:09:59 - because women weren't financial actors. It's just this legal setting that, that that leads to this. and so, this is impacting men's physical liberty a little bit more than it's impacting women's physical liberty. and because of the way that people behaved around debt, it challenges this group of rational economic man that we have for the 18th century.

00:10:30 - that most people think about this is via Adam Smith, right? and people framed this before Adam Smith, but it's kind of the Smith group, right? That, people were rational economic actors. They were very individualistic, and they made decisions based on what would benefit them materially. and then these ideas of rational economic acting get pinned to masculinity. What do I mean by that? Well, we kind of get this separation where we see men as framed as, you know, rational, as independent as self-serving,

Emotion and Gender Dynamics in Debt and Imprisonment

00:11:05 - and more emotional and connected to the households. Well, the work that I've done totally undermines that because we see men operating around the debtor prison being quite emotional in their decisions. There's a lot of reason to suggest that putting someone in prison if they owed you a debt wasn't just a rational kind of thing. You might get paid back,

00:11:36 - And because there's this underlying relationship of social trust underneath debt, men were very angry. and this could be a really emotional move to put someone in in prison. So you see people not acting, men, not acting according to these kind of masculine ideals. at the same time, you know, you see, women not as being more socially connected as more empathetic. women had a larger role

00:12:08 - as prisoners themselves. So we see women acting quite often at, in that very brutal kind of way, using the prison as a way to enforce economic contracts, thinking about how the middle class was constructed, how we think about the middle class. and class is a big deal right now. I think this is one of these, one of these moments where history is quite useful to us in, in the present. You know, especially, given recent American elections,

Class Insecurity: Historical Perspectives on the Middle Class

00:12:40 - voted in a way that maybe, may be surprised, some of us. so this provides an opportunity to think about how individuals have behaved according to their class and how we might think about classes as, as historians. so, you know, first of all, the idea that the middle class kind of has insecurity based into it. Many people who, who consider themselves middle class today feel quite insecure, even if they don't necessarily look

00:13:12 - and a lot of their behavior is, is really informed by that insecurity. Well, that's not kind of a 20th century thing or 21st century thing. When the middle class was formed, it was formed in a very insecure way. and it was something that was open to constant negotiation rather than something that was stable. We know about that. If we look at wealth patterns, among the, the middling sorts, you know, that over generations, families were unlikely to maintain their wealth. Many of them fell. we know that

00:13:46 - that many people who looked like the successful, economic, entrepreneurs of the age were actually right on this knife edge between being successful and falling in p debt and ending up, in, in prison. And we know that how they dealt with the burdens of precariousness, informs how they saw themselves, or how they saw themselves informs how they dealt

Precarious Class Dynamics in 18th Century Society

00:14:17 - In other words, when we think about class, oftentimes we think about people defining themselves according to those above them or those below them. So think about like keeping up with the Kardashians, right? you know, you wanna try to kind of consume and be glamorous, and look like people who have more wealth than you do, or maybe you wanna not fall. So you're defining yourself against people below you. So during the 18th century, people were not just looking

00:15:11 - Shift, shifting the burdens of precariousness sideways. So if you were in debt and you were threatened by your creditor, you might put your neighbor or your friend another middling person in prison in order to get that debt back in order to protect yourself and to protect what it meant to be a person of the middle class.

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