historypeasants and debt in eighteenth-century champagne

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Peasants and Debt in Eighteenth-Century ChampagneAuthor(s): Thomas BrennanReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Autumn, 2006), pp. 175-200Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4139545 .

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Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxvlI:2 (Autumn, 2oo6), 175-200.

Thomas Brennan

Peasants and Debt in Eighteenth-Century" Champagne The classic monographs of rural history written during the past fifty years have numbered debt among the many tribulations afflicting the early-modern peasantry, particularly in France. Offering little more than anecdotal evidence, the au- thors were sure, nevertheless, that peasants suffered from massive amounts of debt. Anyone who consulted inventories after death quickly found balance sheets that presented more debits than credits and, indeed, more debts than assets. These debts periodically forced the peasants to sell their land to rapacious creditors from the city. Debt was an easy explanation for the obvious expropriation of so many peasants, particularly those near towns. Long-term debt, to which peasants were driven when they could no longer keep up with the burden of short-term debt, was also an important mechanism by which towns parasitically siphoned off the productivity of the countryside. Debt in the old regime was thus exploitive or, at best, unproductive. The class of rentiers-that is, those who lived on the income from their annuities-symbolized the lack of an entrepreneurial, capitalist mentality among the bourgeoisie of the old regime. The debtors symbolized the Malthusian cleft stick.1

A number of historians who have recently begun to look more closely at the creditor/debtor relationship now argue for a different interpretation of its economic and social role. Their views, which are based on unprecedented statistical precision and economic sophistication, challenge more than just the classic ques-

Thomas Brennan is Professor of History, United States Naval Academy. He is the author of Burgundy to Champagne: The Wine Trade in Early Modern France (Baltimore, 1997); Public Drinking and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Princeton, 1988).

The author would like to thank Don Sutherland and Liana Vardi for their critiques of earlier drafts.

C 2006 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.

I Pierre Goubert, Cent mille provinciaux au XVIIe siecle (Paris, 1968), 214, admits that "it is difficult to know it [debt] with precision . .. it does not have its own archives." Marc Venard, Bourgeois et paysans au XVIIe siecle (Paris, 1957), 42-46; Pierre de Saint Jacob, Les Paysans de la Bourgogne du nord (Paris, 1960), 159-i6I; Jean Jacquart, "Immobilisme et catastrophe," in Georges Duby and Armand Wallon (eds.), Histoire de la France rurale (Paris, 1975), III, 239- 248. George Taylor, "Types of Capitalism," English Historical Review, LXXIX (1964), 478- 497-



176 THOMAS BRENNAN

tion of peasant immiseration. A new school of thought among historians of France sees economic transformation and growth represented in the spread of commercial exchange, particularly through involvement in the market, in which debt was an integral part. Work on the details of the credit market in Paris and the province is ongoing: the slow evolution of interest rates, the crucial agency of notaries, the profile of lenders and borrowers, and the connec- tion to the land market. The huge amounts of credit discovered throughout the country give the lie to the old belief that France suffered from a lack of it, even in the countryside, and indicate that capital was available to be invested in social and economic assets. Thus has the credit market gained new importance.

Some scholars reject the idea that those who lent money ulti- mately intended to expropriate land, at least in the eighteenth century. They point out that creditors rarely foreclosed and often paid little attention to the land that secured a loan. Creditors undoubtedly obtained a market advantage over debtors, in that they could demand access to debtors' labor and produce, but they may also have felt a moral obligation to assist them. According to the new view, loans became primarily a means to achieve a steady rate of return on wealth-a rational economic and social investment.2

This new research also concludes that the borrowers came from an elite who used the funds for productive purposes. It iden- tifies those in Paris as overwhelmingly from the upper reaches of society and well to do. Additionally, it emphasizes the role that "life cycle" played in the demand for loans-"older lenders grant- ing loans to younger borrowers, who built houses, established businesses, or purchased government offices." By specifying the constructive uses to which these loans could be put, this model as- serts the prevalence of investment debt over consumer debt.3

2 G&rard Beaur, Le marchd foncier (Paris, 1984); Laurence Fontaine, "Espaces, usages et

dynamiques," Annales, XLIX (I994), 1385-1386; idem, "Antonio and Shylock: Credit and Trust in France, c. I68o-c. 1780," Economic History Review, LIV (2001), 54; Philip Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 145o-1815 (Princeton, 1996), 71-80; Guillaume Daudin, Commerce et prosperitd: la France au XVIIIe sidcle (Paris, 2005); Liana Vardi, The Land and the Loom (Durham, 1993); Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, "Economie et politique: les marches du credit a Paris, 175O-I840," Annales, XLIX (1994), 65-98; idem, "Redistribution and Long-Term Private Debt," Journal of Economic His-

tory, LV(1995), 256-284; idem, Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 166o- 187o (Chicago, 2000); Postel-Vinay, La terre et l'argent (Paris, 1998). See the recent collection Maurice Berthe (ed.), Endettement paysan et credit rural (Toulouse, 1998), for work being done in a variety of European countries. 3 Hoffman et al., "Redistribution and Long-Term Private Debt," 260.



PEASANTS AND DEBT 1 177

Recent studies equally reject the traditional argument that debt in the countryside was a sign of misery and that loans were fundamentally exploitive, often arguing instead that the rich loaned most of the money to the only slightly less rich, who invested it in real estate and productive assets. Even poor peasants, on this view, borrowed to invest. Since, in fact, it is rarely clear how borrowers used their loans, much of this argument stands on the identity and wealth of the borrowers, though little direct evidence of their wealth is available.4

The new model also makes its points by focusing on long- term rather than short-term debt, arguing that it constituted the large majority of the existing loaned capital. Short-term borrowing, which tended to be small sums to fund consumption, contin- ues to be associated with a genuine risk of poverty. In contrast, long-term debt consisted principally of perpetual and life annuities (rentes) that lenders with extra funds bought from individuals needing money. The debtors then paid 4 to 5 percent per year on the capital, either "in perpetuity" or until the death of the creditor. Because rentes were usually secured with some collateral, they functioned somewhat like mortgages, though lenders could not ask for repayment of "perpetual" annuities.

This market was organized almost solely by notaries and functioned as the principal means of making credit available for the creation of landed enterprises. Unlike short-term debt, long-term debt allowed investment in property and offices. Yet documentary evidence for the reasons why people actually borrowed money in the form of rentes is scarce. Only rarely do notarial archives con- join constitutions of rente with other documents or suggest a causal link to the acquisition of land, or to inheritance and mar- riage. Hence, it is probably safer to say that rente "permitted investment" than that it always resulted in investment. There were undoubtedly many reasons for long-term loans, several of which are obvious. Inheritances and dowries often required complicated arrangements to make landed assets more liquid without selling them. The purchase of long-term assets-land, offices, or leases- was, and is, a classic reason for raising funds over long periods of time, but so was, and is, the need to defend these assets against the

necessity of liquidating them in hard times.5

4 For a longer, though still largely speculative, discussion, see idem, Priceless Markets, 154- 157. Postel-Vinay, La terre et l'argent, 47-49; Vardi, Land and the Loom, 172-176. 5 Rosenthal, "Rural Credit Markets and Aggregate Shocks: The Experience of Nuits St.



178 THOMAS BRENNAN

Long-term debt might thus have been an entrepreneurial strategy or simply the consequence of transitions in the life cycle of families, but it also might have been a sign of distress. Although there is some logic in drawing a distinction between small, short- term loans intended for immediate consumption and larger, long- term loans earmarked for investment, the two were not mutually exclusive; one could become the other. The older historiography argued that cumulative short-term debt was often turned into

long-term mortgages, at least partly to allow creditors to fore- close.6

If the precise causes of debt are unknown, the next-best way to determine debtors' motivations for borrowing is to ascertain their economic situation and whether they enjoyed relative wealth or poverty. In general, debt borne by someone with substantial assets was not a sign of distress and may well have been part of a

long-term investment strategy. Debtors with few assets may also have been borrowing to invest, but if these debts were large, they would have been in distress nonetheless. In other words, whether the poor borrowed to acquire a small piece of land or to save it from foreclosure, they were probably no more comfortable than the landless villagers who had no mortgage. In the end, the new investment model of debt offers a plausible alternative to the old, exploitive model, but it fails to provide sufficient information about debtors to make its case.7

Georges, 1756-1776," Journal of Economic History, L (1994), 288-306. Postel-Vinay, La terre et l'argent, 42-44, estimates that "notarized debt" constituted 87% of the loaned capital, which also included obligations, though Hoffman et.al., Priceless Markets, 46-47, shows that they made up only 5% of loans in Paris as late as 1742 and did not overtake rentes until the late I770s. Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York, 1998), 82, defines poverty as "a state of continued indebtedness" and argues that a "majority of the households [that he studied] had more [short-term] debts than credits, and that a large percentage . . . had actually more debts than credits and moveable goods combined" (117-119). Beaur, Histoire agraire de la France au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, 2ooo), 124-131. 6 See Goubert (trans. Steve Cox), The Ancien Regime (New York, 1973), 1, 131-132, as an example of the older historiography. 7 For a recent discussion of the cultural meanings of debt, see Muldrew, Economy of Obliga- tion, 148-172; Fontaine, "Antonio and Shylock," 39-57. The classic discussion of the economic impact of debt began with a debate between David Spring, "The English Landed Estate in the Age of Coal and Iron: I83o-8o,"Journal of Economic History, XI (1951), 3-24, and F. M. L. Thompson, "The End of a Great Estate," Economic History Review, VIII (1955), 36- 52, about the English landed gentry. See also David Cannadine, "Aristocratic Indebtedness in the Nineteenth Century: The Case Re-opened," Economic History Review, XXX (1977), 624-



PEASANTS AND DEBT 1 179

This article examines some of the new claims about debt in the old regime, employing unusually detailed evidence to paint an accurate picture of borrowers' economic circumstances, particularly their assets. It is part of a larger project that uses long- and short-term debt to study the regional economy of eighteenth- century Champagne. This article focuses on long-term debt with the aid of particularly rich tax records. Whereas most studies of debt examine borrowers over a span of time through notarial records, this study takes a snapshot of rural Champagne in the 1770s, based on a selection of forty-four villages within 40 kilometers of Reims, to see who borrowed and who did not. The notarial records give no direct evidence about cumulative debt, although the studies devoted to these records make sophisticated calculations to estimate it. The tax records in Champagne, however, identify that very information, thereby allowing a detailed analysis of debtors within their communities. Since, unlike most tax rolls, those of Champagne also list the immovable property of each household, this study can directly relate debts to assets in a manner that has eluded previous studies of debt.8

TAXES IN CHAMPAGNE The region around Reims, in all its variety, offers detailed evidence about the impact of debt on the rural world via its tax records. Like rural communities throughout France, the villages there paid the hearth tax-the taille--but their tax records are unusual. Champagne was one of two generalities to conduct an experiment in tax administration known as the taille tarifre, which was an attempt to base tax assessments on a full record of every taxpayer's revenues-productive land, house, and profession. It calculated the amount of these assets and estimated the net revenue that they generated, distinguishing between arable land, vines, meadow, etc., and even between "good" and "bad" land. Several of the relatively few rolls that survive from the 1740s, when the taille tarifee first appeared, explicitly defined revenues as 5 percent of the value of both land and houses. This technique was

650; L. Perry Curtis, Jr., "Incumbered Wealth: Landed Indebtedness in Post-Famine Ireland," American Historical Review, LXXXV (1980), 332-367; David and Eileen Spring, "Debt and the

English Aristocracy," Canadian Journal of History, XXXI (1996), 377-394. The consensus seems to be that debt must be understood in terms of a debtor's ability to pay the debt service. 8 Hoffman et. al., "Redistribution and Long-Term Private Debt," 280-282. The earliest tailles tarifees for most villages were in the early 1770s, though a few exist for the early 1740s.



I80 THOMAS BRENNAN

no longer explicit in later rolls, though it may still have shaped revenue estimations. The rolls also distinguished between property that was rented, owned, and worked and property that was owned and rented. Finally, the rolls added the revenue from interest that creditors earned on rentes and subtracted the interest that debtors paid on rentes. Although the records rarely specify whether a rente was perpetual or lifetime, the work of Postel- Vinay and others suggests that perpetual annuities were far more common. The few records that actually so specify refer to lifetime rentes, suggesting that the rest were perpetual.9

Although what inspired the administration to push for the taille tarifee during these years is not clear, nearly every village in the region produced one or two full cadastral surveys between 1768 and 1772, thus taking a snapshot of an interesting moment in the eighteenth century: Following several decades of modest growth and prosperity, a sudden increase in the price of grain ush- ered in a turbulent economic period before the Revolution. Since the assets and debts recorded in the tax rolls probably reflected the previous calm more than the immediate crisis, they offer a fairly benign image of the rural economy. Most of these data seem to have been relatively accurate. The documents are littered with the marginalia of assessors correcting and updating the amounts of property belonging to each taxpayer. This kind of information appears to have been largely public, and the assessors obviously tried to stay current. Their valuation of immovable goods was less ex- act, since the later rolls made no effort to distinguish between the productivity of good and bad acres, although the valuations reflected different productivity from one village to the next. All of

9 The whole history is discussed in Robert Lentz, La taille tarifre en Champagne (Paris, 1928), and, more succinctly, in Mireille Touzeray, L'invention de l'impot sur le revenu, la taille tarifte, 1715-1789 (Paris, 1994), who gives an example of officials trying to calculate the net revenue of their parish (87). There is no easy way to check on the accuracy of the estimates for land revenues around Reims, but many of the cahiers produced by these villages before the Revo- lution offered calculations of profits from arable land and vines that come close to the official estimates. See George Laurent, Reims et la region remoise ai la veille de la Revolution (Reims, 1930), IV, for the cahiers. For estimates of income from vines around Paris, see Marcel

Lachiver, Vin, vigne et vignerons en region parisienne du XVIIe au XIXe sidcle (Pontoise, 1982),

338-339. In a painstaking study of returns in Alsace, Jean-Michel Boehler, Une socidte rurale en milieu rhenan: la paysannerie de la plaine d'Alsace (1648-1789) (Strasbourg, 1994), 901-915, suggests that a return of 7 to 8% on arable land was common, as opposed to 15 to 20% for vines.

Unfortunately, no tailles tarifees rolls survive in this region for the period between 1743 and

1768.



PEASANTS AND DEBT I8I

the taxpayers had a clear incentive to reduce their declared income by reporting the rentes that they owed.

According to the taille records, the total long-term debt of the 5,300 households that comprised the forty-four villages chosen from the region was nearly I million livres, paying 48,000 livres a year in annuities. This figure represented an increase of nearly 30 percent over debt levels in the region thirty years earlier-slower growth than in much of France, though faster than elsewhere in Champagne. With an average household debt of some 182

livres-nearly a year's worth of unskilled wages-the region around Reims was not much different from other poor rural re-

gions. Real household debt was much higher, because it included a host of small, informal, short-term debts that do not figure in the tax records, but for the purposes of this study, debt will refer only to the long-term debt.

Against the long-term debts should be set the long-term credits, 32 livres a year, leaving an average of 50o livres of debt per household. Fewer than io percent of debtors had any credits, but we will focus on net debt as a consequence. An average of 15o livres works out to a yearly payment of 7.5 livres per household in annuities, which represented more than 9 percent of the annual income estimated by the taxes-an impressive total, given that much of it had been borrowed from the inhabitants of Reims alone. But the totals do not reveal the large disparities of its distri- bution. Fewer than one-third of these villagers owed the debt, and debtors owed from 20 to 10,ooo livres. The average debt was almost 580 livres (the median was 426), the annual payment for which consumed one-quarter of estimated income, even though debtors were wealthier than non-debtors and had about 60 percent more income.1?

Io Although the tax records give no information about the interest rate or principal of the rente, the notarized debt contracts collected in the controle des actes show that rentes constituted in the early 1770s were paying 5% annuities, and Postel-Vinay, La terre et l'argent, 89-98, indicates that so were most of them in the third quarter of the century. He argues for a gradual decline in interest rates through the century but notes that when the official rate was reduced to 4%, from 1766 to 1770, the number of new loans declined precipitously, suggesting that lenders did not want the rates to drop so low. Rosenthal, "Credit Markets and Economic

Change in Southeastern France 1630-1788," Explorations in Economic History, XXX (1993), 134, finds that the interest rates charged to lower-class borrowers remained higher than on loans made to others. For simplicity, this article assumes that all rentes were paying 5% of the

principal. Tax roles from 1742 or 1743 are available for the villages of Beine, Boult s/Suippes, Bourgogne, Chaumuzy, Hermonville, Juniville, Prosne, Sacy, Troispuits, and Verzy. See



182 1 THOMAS BRENNAN

The totals also miss important differences in the geography of debt. The details about debt in this region show great disparity among the villages. The hinterland of Reims held the principal economic activities that maintained the vibrant economy of the city. Famous now for its wines, it was also, in the eighteenth century, among the most important textile regions of France. Further- more, it had to help feed a city of 25,000 inhabitants. The tax rolls in this study reproduce the rural economy of this hinterland, to a distance of 40 kilometers from Reims. They display important patterns of indebtedness, at both the village and the individual levels.11

The landholding patterns detailed in the tax rolls reveal the social groups in the villages. Most villages had an elite class, readily identifiable by its monopoly of arable land, to which it usually added income from tithes or seigneurial dues. Through a combi- nation of ownership and rental, these wealthy villagers controlled vast farms of 30 hectares or more-roughly what the tax assessors identified as a "plowteam"-on which they employed many laborers. Distinct from this elite minority was a larger group of independent smallholders whose ability to make a living from their lands was more precarious. Those with more than io hectares were considerably more secure in their independence than those with more than 5 hectares. Those with less than 5 hectares were clearly dependent peasants and cottagers, obliged to work for others to supplement their meager crops. Many of them did not even have arable land, just a few small parcels of vines or a garden. The value of land varied considerably by type and location; the revenue estimates in the tax rolls provide a simple technique to assess it. Given an average income of 6 livres per hectare of arable land in the forty-four villages, we can distinguish those who earned less than 30, 6o, i8o livres, etc., from the land that they controlled. At the bottom was a large group who owned no land and often no habitation; many of them escaped the full assessment for wages because of infirmity or age.12

Postel-Vinay, La terre et l'argent, 132-136, for growth in other areas of France, including Cha- teau-Thierry, and 41-42 for a general average of 400 livres per inhabitant. However, the figure would be half of that one in poor regions like Champagne. S1 Tihomir Markovitch, Histoire des industries fran(aises. Les industries lainidres de Colbert a la Revolution (Geneve, 1976). 12 Touzeray, L'invention, io6, notes that the intendant of Champagne considered roughly



PEASANTS AND DEBT 183

The villages in this sample reflect a basic division between hills to the west and south of Reims and plains to the north and east. The hills grew vines, and the plains grew grain, though not all of the villages could concentrate on one of these crops. The few villages in the region with an economy based exclusively on arable land, with no weavers or vineyardists of any consequence, tended to be far from the city. Most of the villages in the plains supple- mented their arable income with revenue from cottage textiles. In several of the villages close to Reims that produced a rough cloth called serge, weavers occupied the majority of households. Textile

villages farther away tended to make a lighter, finer cloth called etamine; weavers there comprised a large minority (see Table I).13

The wealthiest communities, mostly to the south and west of Reims, were purely viticultural. Because the income from a hectare of vines was worth roughly five times the income from arable land in these villages, a much higher percentage of households there could manage some degree of independence. At least half of the male inhabitants in these communities were vinedressers (vignerons); none were cloth workers; and few were plowmen or day laborers. The outsiders owning property there (forains) were un-

usually prevalent, accounting for more than 20 percent of the tax rolls. The bourgeoisie of Reims clearly had made an effort to ac-

quire some of the valuable vineyards around them, much as the elites of Bordeaux and Dijon had done for more than a century. In a few cases, they had acquired half of a village's vines, in holdings that were well above the average size.'4

30 hectares to be a plowteam. See, for example, Jean-Jacques Clere, Les paysans de la Haute-

Marne et la Revolutionfrangaise (Paris, 1988), 62-72; Jean-Michel Chevet, La terre et les paysans en France et en Grande-Bretagne (Paris, 1998), I, 71-80. Such a calculation depended on the

varying productivity in different villages, which is further complicated by the different kinds of land listed within these villages. These values could vary considerably among the different

villages, which estimated their arable productivity at anything from 2 to 12 livres per hectare and their vines at 17 to Ioo livres per hectare. A farmer might have aspired to independence with Io hectares of arable land; a vigneron might do as well with less than a hectare of vines.

13 Archives Departementales de la Marne (hereinafter AD Marne) C 2202, 2211, 2212,

2216, 2217, 2239, 2263, 2290, 2302, 2303, 2309, 2315, 2320, 2323, 2324, Chilons en Cham-

pagne. Arable villages and years: Auberive (1775), Draze (1775), Mourmelon le petit (1770), Prosne (1770), Prunay (1770), Saulce-Champenoise (1770), St-Pierre a Arne, and Serrincourt (1770). Textile villages and years: Beine (1770), Bethiniville (1772), Boult s/Suippes (1771), Bourgogne (1772), Dommery (1769), Juniville (1769), Roizy (1770), St-Clement (1770), and St-Masmes (1770). 14 AD Marne, C 2221, 2223, 2233, 2257, 2313, 2341, 2342, 2347, 2349, E depot 670. Vil- lages and years: Cernay (1768), Cormontreuil (1768), Cormoyeux (1770), Chamery (1768),



184 THOMAS BRENNAN

A final category in the sample were the fifteen villages with

mixed-agricultural economies, where vines were part of a policul- ture that included fruit trees, pasturing, forest products, and arable land. Most of them lay in a band of hilly and wooded countryside west and south of Reims, farther away from the city than the viticultural villages. These were the poorest communities, with the smallest proportion of those capable of even a precarious inde-

pendence, few of whom could make a living as vinedressers. Most of these villages were small, with a surprisingly large proportion of forains, and some of them seem to have been auxiliaries to other, larger, villages in their neighborhoods.15

GEOGRAPHICAL DIFFERENCES IN DEBT The forty-four villages in this sample exemplified the credit economy in hugely diverse

ways; the average per capita debt among them ranged from 8 to 709 livres. Part of the difference was due to large disparities in the

percentage of debtors among these villages, from 2 to 63 percent, but average per capita debt among debtors in each village also

ranged from 200 livres to 1130 livres. The differences in debt between villages reinforce an important argument of the new school-that proximity to urban sources of credit was crucial to

understanding debt patterns. Yet loans from Reims made up little more than half of the region's debts, and the geographical pattern of debt suggests that other factors, like the different economic activities among these villages, also had a significant impact on indebtedness.

The correlation between distance from Reims and average debt for these villages is evident (R= -0.5168), as is the correlation between distance and percentage of a village that was indebted (R= -o.6I154)-a measure more resistant to the impact of

heavily indebted outliers. In addition, in agreement with the new

Champfleury (1768), Hautvillers (1767), Hermonville (1770), Sacy (1773), Trigny (1770), Troispuits (1770), Verzy (1770), Villedommange (I770). Paul Butel, "Les grands proprietaires et production des vins de Medoc au XVIIIe siecle," Revue historique de Bordeaux et du

departement de la Gironde, XI (1963), 129-141; Gaston Roupnel, La ville et la campagne au XVIIe

sihcle: etude sur les populations du pays dijonnais (Paris, 1955), 268-270. 15 AD Marne, C 2216, 2217, 2227, 2237, 2289, 2292, 2298, 2309, 2315, 2321, 2324, 2341.

Villages and years: Bouleuze (1772), Bouilly (1770), Bouvancourt (177I), Bourgogne- lochefontaine (1771), Chaumuzy (1772), Courville (1772), Montigny s/Vesle (1771), Nanteuille (1770), Poilly (1774), Ronay (1773), St-Euphraise (1770), Sapicourt (1770), Sarcy (1770), Savigny (1773), Treslon (1770).



Table 1 The Social Makeup of Economic Subregions

TOTAL ARABLE TEXTILE VITICULTURAL MIXED

HOUSEHOLDS N % N % N % N % N

Plowmen 265 5 57 6 71 5 85 4 52 5 Independent I,027 19 153 16 178 Io 602 32 94 9 Precarious 934 18 143 15 142 IO 516 27 133 13 Dependent 2,006 38 444 46 519 38 529 28 514 49 Landless 1,059 20 167 17 458 33 176 9 258 25

5,29I 964 1,368 ,9o8 I,051I



I86 THOMAS BRENNAN

model's emphasis on the familiarity of creditors with lenders, villages in which many citizens of Reims owned land, asforains, also correlate significantly with average debt (R= 0.5844) and with percentage of indebtedness (R= 0.3902). Moreover, since forains from Reims were more likely to own land in villages that featured wine production (R= 0.8045) than in those close to the city (R= 0.4503), the amount of wine that each village produced is strongly correlated with debt (R= 0.6415) and with percentage of indebtedness (R= 0.5122). Finally, average debt is most closely correlated with a village's average or median taxed income (R= 0.668 I; R= 0.6228). Debt regressed against distance, forains, wine, and median income shows a robust R' of 0.5391, as does percentage of indebtedness regressed against the same factors (R2 = 0.5173). But the considerable colinearity between all of these factors makes these correlations particularly difficult to interpret.16

A village's distance from Reims was also linked, at least gen- erally, to its economic role in the region. Because of both acci- dents of geography and access to markets, a belt of rich vineyards producing expensive wine surrounded the city. The six villages from this sample that lay within Io km of the city were viticultural, averaging 49 percent indebtedness. The two-dozen villages in the next Io km belt, which were more evenly distributed among viticulture, textile, and mixed economies, averaged 33 percent indebtedness. However, whereas the textile villages in this band averaged 20 percent indebtedness, the viticultural villages averaged an indebtedness of 49 percent and the mixed economies an indebtedness of 31 percent. The villages between 20 and 30 km away were geared principally to arable land and textiles-averaging 25 and 26 percent indebtedness, respectively; the viticultural and mixed-economy villages within that area averaged 42 percent. Nearly all of the more distant villages had low levels of indebtedness. The upshot is that a village's economy influenced its indebtedness in a way that depended only partly on its proximity to the city (see Table 2).

The different economies in this region had vastly different ex-

16 The volume of wine production for each village, as an estimate made in 1773 of "the number of muids in an average year," can be found in AD Marne, C 430. The P-values for

average debt: distance= 0.0546, median income= 0.0532, forains= 0.7944, wine= 0.1308. The P-values for percentage in debt: distance= o.ooo5, median income= 0.o874, forains= o.1730, wine= 0.o883.



Table 2 Indebtedness in Economic Subregions

VILLAGES (UNWEIGHTED) T VILLAGES (44) ARABLE (8) TEXTILE (9) MIXED (I S) VITICULTURAL (12)

Avg. debt (in livres) 171 68.3 117 124.8 338 Percent households in debt 31.7 18.6 21.3 31.4 48.5 Avg. debt of debtors (livres) 497.2 386.7 563.9 365.3 685.6



188 I THOMAS BRENNAN

periences of long-term debt. The per-capita debts of those in viticultural villages were 338 livres, approaching the levels in wealthier parts of France. The per-capita average in mixed economies was less than half of that in the viticultural villages. Textile villagers averaged 117 livres, and those in arable communities owed only 68 livres. The disparity was due only partly to the prevalence of debtors, however. Although the average debt was roughly 375 livres in villages with mixed and arable economies, it was 50 percent greater in textile villages and more than 75 percent greater in viticultural villages.

The record of rentes in several decades' worth of notarial archives, registered in the contr6les des actes, paints much the same picture for the more than 350 villages in the 30 km radius around Reims. A sample of more than I,ooo loans, worth nearly 500,000 livres, shows relatively little correlation between debt and either distance from Reims (R= -0.3342) or wine production (R= 0.2680). Thus, the thirty-eight villages within io km of Reims owed only 21 percent of the number and 23 percent of the amount of debt in the region. To some extent, these low percent- ages testify to the robust involvement of rural creditors, who provided nearly two-thirds of the number and roughly one-half of the amount of the loans in this sample. Yet the vast majority of the region's debt (82 percent of both number and amount) went to the 155 villages that lay within 20 km of the city. In this scenario, the role of wine was much more important (R= 0.5378) and distance from Reims much less (R= -0.1382). Thus, the 59 villages within this radius that produced no wine received 13 percent of the loans, and the 51 villages in which wine production was below the region's average received 27 percent. The 29 percent of the villages with the most vines received 60 percent of the loans.'7

Patterns of long-term debt in these villages reinforce one of the chief arguments of the new economic history of the Old Re- gime. Although other factors influenced the amount of borrowing in different villages-such as proximity to Reims and average wealth-the type of economy clearly played an important role. Viticulture was among the most commercial sectors of the area's

17 This information derives from the controle des actes of Cormicy, 17721773; Pontfaverger, 1770-1771; Reims, 1741, 1751-1752, 1769-1771; Verzy, 1747-1750, 1767- 1771; Ville, 1758-1773. See AD Marne, C 4296, 4594, 4623, 4629, 4644, 4645, 5062, 5063, 5065, 5093, 5094.




agriculture, depending on the market to sell the wine that it produced and to buy the grain that it did not produce. Wine growers, even those operating at a modest level, were more likely to rely on the market than all but the largest grain producers; they were more

likely to commercialize their produce personally than were most textile weavers. With markets came debt-for investments, for in- ventory, and for income smoothing-but who within each village sought such credit and why are still unknown. The new model of debt argues that wealthy individuals did most of the borrowing and that loans correlated with landed assets and wealth on an individual basis. However, because the relationship between income and debt on the village level gives only a rough indication of individual patterns of debt, questions remain: What was the relationship between individuals' debts and their circumstances? Do con- nections between wealth, age, sex, or occupation explain the existence of debt, and do any discernible patterns suggest the role of debt in individual lives? The details of each household may provide answers.18

INDIVIDUAL DEBT Despite the apparent correlation between a

village's average income and its average debt, the income of individual households, as measured by the tax assessors, does a medio- cre job of predicting debt (R= 0.3044). Nor does the income

figure provided by the tax records appear to be the best one to use for distinguishing between households in any case. The official

system assessed income on the basis of estimated revenue from various properties, to which it added estimated revenue from tax-

payers' wages and professional or commercial activities. It also assessed household income from any rental property, including housing, even though it was simply a living expense. These calculations tended to overestimate the income of the poorest households and underestimate the income of the wealthiest ones in these villages, thereby minimizing actual disparities in wealth. Thus, the coefficient of variation for all income was 1.214, whereas the coefficient of variation for all assets was 1.382, and for landed property, which probably revealed the disparities in rural

society better than the other measures, was 1.632. Yet land did not

18 Beaur, "Investissement foncier, epargne et cycle de vie dans le pays chartrain au XVIIIe siecle," Histoire et mesure, VI (1991), 275-288; Brennan, Burgundy to Champagne: The Wine Trade in Early Modern France (Baltimore, 1996); Vardi, Land and the Loom, 191.



190 THOMAS BRENNAN

predict debt much better than income did (R= 0.3402); only when housing assets are added does it predict even moderately well (R= 0.4146).19

The role of wealth becomes clearer when examined with re-

gard to the social groups within these villages. The impact of debt on them depended on two issues-what percentage of each group was in debt, and how much the debtors owed. Since a small percentage of the few debtors who were also creditors were net creditors, the questions are, Who were the net debtors, and how much net debt did they owe? The richest villagers were not, as a group, substantially more indebted than the next group. Although the av-

erage elite debtor owed considerably more (1230 livres) than the

average debtor in other economic groups, 61 percent of the elite

group owed nothing at all, making the average debt per elite vil-

lager only 538 livres. This group also owned 40 percent of the credits. The villagers at the next level, whose 10 to 30 hectares translated into economic independence but not necessarily economic power, owed nearly as much collectively as the elites did, but only because half of their households were in debt. On an individual basis, they owed less than the elites did. Even more modest landholders, those with 5 to Io hectares, were more likely to be in debt than the elites (44 percent), though their individual debts were much smaller. Only the smallest landholders and those without any land were less likely to owe rentes (27 percent), and the debts that they incurred were much smaller, too. In general terms, wealth in land assets meant both greater likelihood of debt and

larger per capita debt (see Table 3).20 The relationship between debt and land, however, was not

straightforward. The amount of debt that the different classes of landholder carried as a function of their landed wealth varied con-

siderably. The 1230 livres that the average elite debtor owed reduced to 30 livres per each acre owned, based on an average hold-

ing of 38 hectares or its equivalent. A comparison of the annuity paid on this debt, at 5 percent, to the estimated revenue of this land, shows that the debt service (the ratio of debt payments to in-

19 Ulrich Pfister, "Le petit credit rural en Suisse aux XVIe-XVIIIe siecles," Annales, LXIX (1994), 1345, finds a correlation of 0.6 in the Swiss village of Ebikon. David Weir, "Family In-

come, Mortality, and Fertility on the Eve of the Demographic Transition: A Case Study of

Rosny-Sous-Bois," Journal of Economic History, LV (1995), 2-I2, discusses the components of the taille tarifee in one village. 20 Of 1,66o households in debt, 121 also had rentes owed them; 35 of these households were net creditors.




Table 3 Social Makeup of Debtors

ALL HOUSEHOLDS NET DEBTORS

AVG. DEBT, AVG. CREDIT, AVG. NET N % LIVRES LIVRES % DEBTORS DEBT, LIVRES

Plowmen 265 5 538 204 39 1,230 Independent I,027 19 390 55 49 764 Precarious 934 I8 235 16 44 518 Dependent 2,oo6 38 90 Io 27 326 Landless 1,o059 20 17 12 6 272 Total 5,291 150 32 31 566

come from land) amounted to only 28 percent. A comparison of land value, which earlier rolls estimated at twenty times annual revenue, to total debt, also shows a debt burden of 28 percent. In contrast, the debtors among the poorest landholders bore a burden four times greater on each of their few hectares. They paid 18 percent more in debt service than they made from their lands and owed 18 percent more than their lands were worth. Hence, even a fairly good correlation between debt and property among those who chose to borrow meant large disparities in the impact of debt. So far as landed assets and collateral are concerned, elites were lightly burdened by debt and the smallest landholders were practi- cally crushed (see Table 4).

In fact, it is hard to see how the poorest villagers were able to come up with the collateral for their debts. The value of land varied considerably within villages; the estimated incomes in Table 4 are clearly a rough average for the whole village, probably overes- timating the value of the poorest land, owned by the poorest landholders. Nevertheless, the available evidence suggests that the average value of the land owned by the dependent peasantry-their most obvious collateral-was inferior to the average amount of their debts. How did they manage to borrow so much?

One answer appears to lie in their housing assets. Scholars have studied rural housing much less than rural landholding, for a variety of reasons. Descriptions of the houses and evidence about their value are scarce. Yet the taille tarifie was scrupulous about identifying housing assets along with the land. For the homes of all taxpayers, it noted the fact of ownership or rental, and even docu-



Table 4 Debt Burdens

AVG. NET AVG. LAND AVG. NET DEBT, NET DEBT NET DEBT,

NET DEBTORS, DEBT, INCOME, LAND, SERVICE, BURDEN, PER

ALL VILLAGES N LIVRES LIVRES HECTARES LIVRES HECTARES HOUSING

Plowmen 103 6 1,230 223 37.7 .28 32.7I .90

Independent 504 31 764 92 14.5 .41 52.7 .92

Precarious 412 25 518 40 6.5 .65 79-9 .88

Dependent 541 33 326 14 2.4 1.18 145-4 .76 Landless 65 4 272 O O .72

Total 1,625 566 59 9.5 .49 57.1 .87




mented when taxpayers received free housing. As they did for all of the assets listed in the tax records, assessors estimated the value of houses or their rental value, though evidence suggests that the revenue from housing, like that from land, was meant to be 5 percent of a house's estimated worth. Roughly one-third of all households owned no housing assets and paid rent for their lodg- ing-?three-quarters of the landless among them. A much smaller minority in the other categories was in the same position.21

Based on these estimations, housing made up one-third of the region's immovable wealth, a considerable proportion, and the average debt of borrowers is remarkably close to the estimated value of their housing. Since debt was, on average, nearly as much as a house was worth and rarely greater, Table 4 suggests that housing was the primary form of collateral, answering the question of how households managed to incur debt. But it does not shed much light on why. A majority of those who owned housing (55 percent), even of those who owned both housing and land (53 percent), were not in debt. Why did some borrow and others not?

Since housing provided collateral but no income to service the debt, the answer probably lies in landholding patterns. Fur- thermore, housing fails to explain important differences in borrowing practices across the region. The percentage of homeown- ers in debt varied enormously, from less than one-quarter in arable villages and less than one-third in textile villages to one-half in mixed economies and two-thirds in viticultural villages. Nor, for the same reason, can we explain home owning by debt. Although the desire for home ownership might have pushed vine growers to borrow more than others, the percentage of home owning in viticultural villages was not particularly high, even though debt was. Instead, arable villages, which had the smallest percentage of indebted households, also had the highest level of home owning. Here collateral was readily available, yet few chose to use it.

LIFE CYCLE Some of the differences between economic groups are attributable to the life cycle. Households tended to start out with only a little land and to acquire more with time; households with fewer acres tended to be younger than those with more. The

21 J. P. Bardet, Maisons rurales et urbaines dans la France traditionnelle (Paris, 1971); Jacquart, L'habitat rural en Ile de France au XVIIe sidcle (Marseille, 1977). This evidence is found only in the tax rolls of 1743, in which houses are given an estimated value, as well as revenue.



194 THOMAS BRENNAN

fact that women headed one-fifth of these households, however, complicates the issue. Women are usually excluded from discussions of taille records since most of them were old and widowed and thus notoriously anomalous. In fact, female heads of household were, on average, much older than their male counterparts (53.5 versus 44.2), even though slightly more than one-third of them were unmarried "filles" whose average age was only 38. Women also had considerably less income and less property. But debt had less of an impact on women as a whole than on men, largely because a smaller proportion of women were debtors. Women debtors, however, owed nearly as much as male debtors (513 livres versus 576 livres) and bore a heavier debt service (.56 livres) than did men (.48 livres). Thus was women's experience of debt distinct from men's. Since it followed a different life cycle, it should be excluded from discussions of debt based on age.

Several studies use the life-cycle model to explain debt as a sound investment strategy rather than as a sign of poverty. Accord- ing to the model, young people went into debt to marry and to es- tablish a household, farm, or business. They incurred as much as two-thirds of their debt before the age of forty. With age, house- holders switched from borrowing to lending, again as a rational use of assets. To some extent, the villages around Reims support this model. Treating the age profile of these villages not as a static snapshot but as a dynamic trajectory allows debt to be followed through the life cycle. The percentage of debtors increased sharply from one-third of men in their thirties to nearly one-half of those in their fifties before declining again to one-third of men in their seventies. The average amount of debt increased similarly, though less dramatically--that owed by men younger than forty being lower than that owed by men in their fifties but not so different from that owed by men in their seventies. The male population in its thirties assumed more than half (58 percent) of the total debt level that men ever reached (in their fifties). In the process, they acquired far more property than those not in debt, almost double the property by their forties. Old age brought a significant increase in lending, both among debtors and non-debtors (see Table 5).22

22 Postel-Vinay, Terre et l'argent, 54-60; Jean-Marc Moriceau, Lesfermiers de l'Ile de France (Paris, 1994), 592-594; Beaur, "Investissement foncier, 281-283; Hoffman, Postel-Vinay, and Rosenthal, "Private Credit Markets in Paris, 169o0-840," Journal of Economic History, LII (1992), 293-306. Weir, "Family Income," 10, argues similarly that his "one-time observation on household income is a good proxy for lifetime income."



Table 5 Life Cycle of Male Debt

MEN NET DEBTORS NON DEBTORS

AVG. AVG. AVG. NET AVG. DEBT AVG. AVG.

DEBT, CREDIT, DEBT, LAND, SERVICE, DEBT CREDIT, LAND, BY AGE N o% LIVRES LIVRES % AGE LIVRES LIVRES LIVRES BURDEN LIVRES LIVRES

<30 583 14 56 9 11 506 41 .62 72 9 19 30-39 1,254 30 188 13 33 547 50 .55 66 13 29 40-49 857 21 223 24 38 557 65 .43 54 22 35 50-59 576 14 323 38 46 673 73 .46 59 44 47 60-69 492 12 221 48 38 56o 65 -43 49 6o 45 70+ 259 6 172 146 31 495 45 .55 65 188 57

155 4 189 31 23 757 77 .49 62 16 35 T 4,176 198 31 33 576 6o .48 59 34 35



196 THOMAS BRENNAN

Most debtors shed little of their debt even in old age, and even though average debt declined with age, so did average land

holdings. Thus, the burden of debt on land diminished relatively little (II percent) between debtors' thirties and fifties, and it

changed little between middle and old age, though the percentage of debtors declined. If the justification for debt was to get ahead, most debtors never succeeded. Furthermore, the extra assets that debt was supposed to bring became less evident over time; debtors tended not to be the wealthy people in their villages. Debtors in their thirties owned 72 percent more land than non-debtors. By their fifties, however, their advantage had dropped to 55 percent, and by their seventies, they had actually fallen behind non- debtors. Subtracting debt service from land income reveals that most debtors were earning less than non-debtors their own age. After a point, debt became not so much a strategy to gain assets as a way for consumers to keep pace. Debtors' lack of success dem- onstrates that analysis based solely on age and wealth does not

sufficiently answer the question of why people went into debt.

IMPACT OF DEBT This article offers considerable support for the new model of debt, but with important limitations. The majority of the region's borrowed money (56 percent), though not of the individual loans (37 percent), went to those who were relatively solvent-independent or even wealthy farmers. Yet borrowing was less a strategy of those at the top of rural society, the coqs du vil-

lage, than of those who were less secure in their wealth. Independ- ent peasants alone comprised one-third of all debtors and owed 42 percent of the region's debts. Their Io to 30 hectares gave them the "prestige, position, and power of the employer," but, since their debts were worth roughly 40 percent of their landed assets, most of them owned only 8 or 9 hectares that were free and clear. Without going into debt, these villagers probably would not have been assured of economic independence, not to mention the social mobility, and the trappings of success, that went along with it.23

A similar argument may apply, though more hesitantly, to the

quarter of debtors whose independence was even more precarious, depending upon location and year. Slightly fewer than half of

23 Goubert, The Ancien Regime, I, I I4




those owning 5 to Io hectares also owed rentes, but their debts were, on average, large enough to engulf two-thirds of what their lands were estimated to produce as profit. This ratio of debt payments to income from land, the debt service, is an important measure of a debtor's solvency. A study of landed estates in nineteenth-century Ireland suggests that when debt service rose above 6o percent (two-thirds of the land mortgaged), owners were "heading for irrecoverable arrears, insolvency, and other embar- rassments." In the case of the Reims area, what this group of villagers owned clear of debt was little more than 2 hectares. Their borrowings might have moved them into a social category that offered subsistence and even profits in good times, but their debt service would have eaten much of the benefit away; the bulk of their assets were fragile.24

The one-third of debtors in these villages who comprised the smallest, most dependent landholders appear to evade the new model entirely. Even if they employed debt as a rational strategy for acquiring a few parcels of land to avoid complete penury, on average, their land was totally mortgaged, and their debt service swallowed all of their landed income, and then some. To these marginal landowners can be added the few landless peasants, who do not conform to the new model either. Together they owed only one-fifth of the total debt, but their numbers meant that their collective experience of debt was a major factor in the region. Hence, although some of the debtors in these villages support the new paradigm, almost as many support the old one. The poorest peasants were unlikely to have borrowed money for the purpose of investment; they look much like the classic case of poverty compounded by mortgage.

The pattern of debt service for the region as a whole makes roughly the same point. It defines three basic levels of debtor: those safely paying less than two-thirds; those paying more than two-thirds, with a high risk of ruin; and those already in deep trouble, paying more than their landed income was worth. A little more than half of the region's indebted households were either safe or relatively so; their debts look like rational investments. The other half were in dire straits, however, nearly one-third of them facing ruinous debt. The life cycle does not help to explain these

24 Curtis, "Incumbered Wealth," 348.



198 THOMAS BRENNAN

differences, since the average age of each of these groups was prac- tically identical-the safe half averaging forty-eight years and the ruinous half averaging forty-nine years. Instead, the economic differences within the region shed some light on their debt (see Table 6).

The worst case-debt devouring the landed income of 39 to 40 percent of households-occurred in the mixed and textile villages, which also saw the greatest poverty, defined by the proportion of households with less than 5 hectares. The percentage of debtors in this category was noticeably less in arable villages and

just slightly more than half as large in viticultural villages, which also saw the least poverty. Similarly, the safest borrowing-debt service below two-thirds-was most common in the richest vil-

lages with arable economies (64 percent) and viticultural economies (57 percent). What is equally striking, however, is that villages with vines, especially the purely viticultural ones, had more borrowers (and a higher percentage of them) in the high-risk cate-

gory-between 66 percent and Ioo percent of landed income- than did villages without them. The reason might have something to do with the land hunger that is often associated with vineyards; investment in a small amount of such land could often provide employment and even subsistence. Furthermore, whereas those in the safest category of debt averaged Ioo livres of land income, and those in misery averaged only 17 livres, those in the high-risk category averaged 45 livres of land income, which put them squarely in the class of landowners with precarious independence. Unfor- tunately, these debtors also owed an average of 8 1 percent of their landed income as debt service, leaving them only a pittance for survival.25

As the amounts and rates of indebtedness clearly demonstrate, vines meant debt, though debt was also associated with proximity to Reims and with its citizens' ownership of vineyards as forains. But what debt meant in the viticultural villages depended on several variables, not least of which was its role in the investment strategies of young adults. A small majority of the debtors in these

villages bore sustainable debts. They appear to have been enter-

25 Beaur, "Foncier et credit dans les socit&&s preindustrielles," Annales, XLIX (1994), 1421-

1428.



Table 6 Impact of Debt Service by Economic Subregion

DEBT SERVICE TOTAL ARABLE TEXTILE VITICULTURAL MIXED

DEBT PAYMENT DIVIDED

BY LAND INCOME N % N % N % N % N

< 33 % 420 26 57 36 69 26 226 26 68 20 33-66 % 456 28 43 28 61 23 270 31 82 25 66-Ioo % 282 17 18 II 30 II 182 21 52 16 > Ioo % 467 29 42 26 Io6 40 189 22 130 39

1,625 160 266 867 332



200 THOMAS BRENNAN

prising peasants who took a chance on acquiring land, helping to make the favored vineyards around Reims into a more democratic and economically homogenous society than the other communities in the region. But vines did not rescue the mixed economies from poverty. They seem to have lured a large number of poor peasants into extremely risky bets on land from which they could not expect to make a living. One-third of the sample's debtors be-

longed to the two most burdened groups in the two economies with vineyards. Debt for those whose small vineyards were mort-

gaged to the hilt could only be associated with grinding poverty. This heavy debt would also shape the development of the lo-

cal wine trade. The citizens of Reims had been busily buying up vineyards in the villages around them; whether they had been us-

ing credit and foreclosure on debt to acquire them is unclear. More importantly, they had been gaining control of the local wine trade and using credit to gain leverage over the wine growers who owed them. Falling into arrears on annuities made debtors vulner- able to threats of court action, which they could prevent only by selling their wine to their creditors at a low price. The inhabitants of Reims were acquiring even more wine than land, and develop- ing an international market for it. With names like Mopinot, Clicquot, Sutaine, and Maillefer prominent among the creditors of Reims, the link between the wine trade and the credit market is unmistakable. The need for loans drove the poorest of the landowners to rely on the people who could most profit from their distress. Debt, which was increasingly a tool of rational investment for a growing number of people in towns and the countryside, was still, for many of the rural poor, the agency of their own exploita- tion.26

26 Brennan, Burgundy to Champagne, I29-130, 265-271.



historypeasants and debt in eighteenth-century champagne

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