#moneylender

[jlcredit]

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[tenth-sentence]

They continued as moneylenders and credit agents only at a small level, between trusted partners.

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[akiymgc]

Kick Ass #4

[bestlicensedmoneylender]

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[dieinct]

i think i need to reread redwall to decide whether i think it's set during the period of jewish expulsion

[wolframpant]

"If only there were two of you."

Antonia the Younger in season 2 of Domina

[plaguegirll]

i feel like i’m going crazy

[sad-eyed-lady-of-the-paperbacks]

Ok I should do an actual thoughtful post on this but instead I’m just gonna go off on a ramble. (I’m not a historian or a financial expert btw)

So I have always been interested in the discrepancy between Mitya’s assertion to Alyosha near the beginning that Grushenka “liked to make a bit of dough and made it by lending at wicked rates of interest, the cunning vixen, the rogue, without mercy.” (McDuff translation 1.3.5) and the narrator’s assertion in 3.7.3 “Not that she ever lent money on interest”. At first I chalked it up to Mitya just making assumptions about her, since he does say some things that are incorrect (for instance that Samsonov will leave her a considerable sum of money when he dies, when it is well known that he said he wouldn’t and, sure enough, did not even mention her in the will). However, I did think it was odd that a profit-motivated professional moneylender would never lend money on interest, and it feels even more odd now that I know there was a legal annual interest limit (6%). If it was legal to lend on interest, why wouldn’t she?

Well. I’m now reading the very fascinating Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia: Debt, Property, and the Law in the Age of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy by Sergei Antonov. And it’s fascinating getting context on all of this—and, bear in mind, context that Dostoevsky’s audience would have taken for granted.

There were a lot of regulatory laws that existed around moneylending and debt collecting, as usury was extremely frowned-upon legally, religiously, and socially. But these laws were very difficult to enforce, especially since moneylenders had all kinds of ways of skirting around them and hiding their more predatory practises. Besides, according to the above-mentioned reference work, “even at the highest levels the government realized that it was both impossible and undesirable to eliminate interest rates that exceeded the legally mandated maximum.” So, Antonov goes on to relate:

For example, an 1861 memo prepared by one of the tsar’s closest aides and a general in the Corps of Gendarmes, Ivan Annenkov, recognized that usurers in Russia enjoyed “complete immunity” but urged that “we must not [condemn as usurers] all persons who loan money for interest, even if under private agreements such interest would exceed the limit defined by the law. Everybody knows that no one has so far placed his capital in private hands in return for the legal 6% . . . [government’s policies] must not touch upon those private obligations and conditions that are founded upon mutual benefit.” Annenkov proposed a systematic procedure of identifying as many individual lenders as possible and then focusing on those known to engage in particularly abusive practices.

So this guy was like “yeah, even though what they’re doing is technically not legal, we kind of agree with it actually, and so instead of going after people based on the letter of the law, let’s just keep an eye on known moneylenders and go after the ones who are really crossing the line and hurting people.

Which meant that the police did keep detailed records of known moneylenders, and to the shock of absolutely no one, the notes beside the names in these records were heavily interested in the personal character of each lender. Political leanings, religion, whether they had a family, whether they were landowners, their morals and conduct, etc. I’m sure none of this led to any kind of discrimination in terms of who was allowed to get away with predatory moneylending practises and who was prosecuted for the very same. (Heavy sarcasm) 

Since Grushenka did not have a powerful family behind her and was widely known to be a fallen woman and Kuzma Samsonov’s mistress (despite the fact that she was definitively known not to be promiscuous and to reject the advances of any other men who tried it), it’s very likely to me that she would be under special scrutiny, especially in a small town where there weren’t as many moneylenders to keep an eye on as there were in, say, St. Petersburg. Given that she received a lot of business advice from Samsonov, and some of this advice might very likely have included those methods of getting away with practises of dubious legality without leaving a paper trail, and given the necessity of her being extra careful in order not to be prosecuted, it would make sense that the narrator (being himself a character and resident of the town, and thus only able to report things to us based on the information he has available and how it appears to him,) would not have any information or records available to him which would suggest that she was lending on interest at all, let alone above the legal rates. Given the strong negative feelings against usury, making such an accusation or implication without evidence would be highly slanderous, and the narrator would be unwise to risk that, thus his statement that Grushenka did not lend on interest at all.

Whereas it is possible that, given Mitya’s close association with Grushenka during the past month and the fact that she does confide some things in him (her feelings about Alyosha, letting him read the letter her officer sent, laughing about Fyodor’s scheme to have him jailed, etc.), he may have known something the narrator didn’t. Of course, it’s also possible that he was just making an assumption that happened to be correct, or at least more plausible than the narrator’s.

And I think that Dostoevsky meant for the narrator’s assertion that she never lent on interest to seem highly improbable, even implausible, given that his audience would have been very familiar with the widespread business of moneylending across all classes of society, and how it operated. Again, if there was a legal maximum interest rate, and plentiful ways to get away with illegally lending above that maximum rate, then why would a professional moneylender consistently lend money on no interest at all? She would at the very least be lending on legal rates to make a profit off of the interest, and more than likely at illegal rates as well, simply taking care to do so covertly. And I think the original audience would have understood this implicitly.

Hope this was somewhat coherent.

[booksaremyadventures]

“Because that's what the story's really about: getting out of paying your debts. That's not how they tell it, but I knew. My father was a moneylender, you see.” - Spinning Silver

By Naomi Novik

When I tell you I am OBSESSED with this book.. Just an awesome, multi-POV book with strong female leads 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[girderednerve]

sat down to write about the whole 'media literacy'/cultural complex about what immoral books (whatever we take this to mean) can do to children, & ended up writing three paragraphs about the prioress's tale. i think the real media illiterate here is me

[tenth-sentence]

Single women headed households as independent widows, deserted wives, single mothers and spinsters, earning their own livings, often on the breadline in rural communities, but sometimes very successful in towns: especially in luxury goods and retail business, lending small amounts of money to familiar faces – trusted creditors.

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[mermaidsirennikita]

There's a historical romance discussion space I'd really like to engage with, but can't, because it feels like every other post is bemoaning a lack of historical accuracy from "lazy authors", while at the same time repeating inaccuracies over and over in the community....

and somehow these devotees to accuracy seem to have never heard of KJ Charles, who writes incredibly well-researched books that happen to be about queer couples, or Beverly Jenkins, who has literal bibliographies citing historical records and resources... while writing exclusively Black historical romance

[bestlicensedmoneylender]

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[stillwaterseas]

saw one of those "paying ANY interest is theft" posts and my first thought is always "tell me you don't understand economics without telling me" but my SECOND thought was "ah, yes, the gut-level appeal of antisemitism"

[timegears-moved]

urgggghrghh i am. thinking about very minor pmd oc ideas

[notesfromthequotidian]