In the Red and in the Black: Debt, Dishonor, and the Law in France between the Revolutions

A reader might fear that a study of bankruptcy from roughly 1789 to 1870 in France would bog down in the minutia of interest rates, contractual forms, and the composition of a committee of creditors. Instead, however, this fine monograph uses the methods of cultural, economic, political, and legal history to plumb the experiences of insolvent merchants, financiers, tradespeople, and consumers. Their ruin brought bitterness, imprisonment, and sometimes a few opportunities. Canteens, gambling, and fruit vending, for instance, allowed them to earn a little money in jail. Some of them set up smoking rooms, and added wallpaper and even an alabaster clock to their cells (128–137). Vause’s records describe businessmen who tossed account books into piles of manure or, after burying indigo in a marsh, came into court spouting Latin gibberish (80–81, 105–106). Periodicals like Pauvre Jacques excoriated creditors, bailiffs, and the “tissue of lies” that led to financial demise...