Although bankruptcy was a rather exceptional situation in the life of a merchant, it has explanatory power for routines of economic stakeholders, for their space of experience and their horizon of expectation. We can therefore use the irregularity of failure as an indicator of regularities. Considering the long, non-uniform and unsteady transition from merchant capitalism to industrial and financial capitalism, we suggest to start a dialogue between modernistes and contemporanéistes. The workshop focuses on the various forms of contextualizing business failure and puts forward three major research axes: Covering and Uncovering: Secrecy and Publicity; Economic Space and Area of Jurisdiction; Temporal Narratives of (In)Solvency.

Presentation

Although bankruptcy was a rather exceptional situation in the life of a merchant, it has explanatory power for routines of economic stakeholders, for their space of experience and their horizon of expectation. We can therefore use the irregularity of failure as an indicator of regularities. Considering the long, non-uniform and unsteady transition from merchant capitalism to industrial and financial capitalism, we suggest to start a dialogue between modernistes and contemporanéistes. The workshop focuses on the various forms of contextualizing business failure and puts forward three major research axes: Covering and Uncovering: Secrecy and Publicity; Economic Space and Area of Jurisdiction; Temporal Narratives of (In)Solvency.

Free entry upon reservation: event@dhi-paris.fr

Partners

• Institut historique allemand
• Institut universitaire de France
• Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Programm

Monday, 18 March 2018

14:00 Meet & Greet

14:30 Welcome and Introduction

• Thomas Maissen (Institut historique allemand): Director’s Welcome Address
• Jürgen Finger (Institut historique allemand/Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich): Contextualizing Bankruptcy: Perspectives and Research Axes

15:15 Covering and Uncovering: Secrecy and Publicity 1

Chair: Jasper Kunstreich (Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt a.M.)

• Jean-Paul Barrière (University of Franche-Comté, Besançon): Notary Bankruptcies in 19th-Century France in the Eyes of Justice and Profession: Between Secrecy and Publicity
• Eric Häusler (University Bern): Social Acceptance Through Publicity? The Bernese Geldstag. as an Example of a Legitimate Bankruptcy Proceeding in the Long 19th Century

17:15 Covering and Uncovering: Secrecy and Publicity 2

Chair: Jérôme Sgard (Sciences Po, Paris)

• Tyson Lehchter (University of Chicago): An Abyss of Debt: Corporatism, Bankruptcy, and Responsibility in Restoration France
• Saul Samir (University of Montréal): Far from the Light of Day: Bankrupt Parisian Minor Banks and Petty Bankers from 1882 to 1914

Tuesday, 19 March 2018

9:00 Economic Space and Area of Jurisdiction

Chair: Laurence Fontaine (Centre Maurice Halbwachs CNRS-ENS-EHESS, Paris)

• Benoît Saint-Cast (University »Lumière« Lyon 2): Bankruptcy Rules, Local Jurisdictions and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe: The Case of Lyons in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries
• Stefan Geißler (ETH Zurich): The Lloyd’s List: Providing Security against Bankruptcy
• Margrit Schulte Beerbühl (Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf): The International Speculation Bubble of 1799 and Cross-border Insolvency Practices

11:30 Temporal Narratives of (In)Solvency 1

Chair: Natacha Coquery (LARHRA, University »Lumière« Lyon 2, Institut universitaire français)

• Viera Rebolledo-Dhuin (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines): The Inter-se of Commercial Regulations: The Bankruptcies of Parisian Booksellers-publishers in the 19th Century
• Laurine Manac'h (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris): Questioning Contractual and Legal Definitions of Liability in Spanish Bankruptcy Proceedings: Surroca, Comas y Cía’s Case in early 19th-Century Catalonia

14:00 Temporal Narratives of (In)Solvency 2

Chair: Mark Sven Hengerer (Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich)

• Riina Turunen (University of Jyväskylä): Past, Present and Future in the Narratives of Finnish 19th-Century Urban Bankrupts
• Emmanuel Debruyne (Catholic University of Leuven): Should I Stay or Should I go? Bankrupts and their Residential Mobility in “Belle Epoque” Belgium, 1896–1914

15:30 Final discussion

• Mark Sven Hengerer (Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich): Final Commentary and Conclusion