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Lending, foreclosure and redemption from Bronze Age finance to the Jubilee Year...and forgive them their debts / Michael Hudson.

by Hudson, Michael, 1939-

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ISLET-Verlag, 2018.

Money -- History.

Loans -- History.

Foreclosure -- History.

Debt -- History.

Debt cancellation -- History.

9783981826029 (pbk.)

Alternate title:

And forgive them their debts. Lending, foreclosure and redemption from Bronze Age finance to the Jubilee Year

... and forgive them their debts. Lending, foreclosure and redemption from Bronze Age finance to the Jubilee Year

xxvi, 311 p. : b&w ill., map ; 25 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [286]-311) and indexes.

The rise and fall of jubilee debt cancellations and clean slates -- Archaic economies versus modern preconceptions -- Part I : OVERVIEW : -- A Babylonian Perspective on Liberty and Economic Order -- Jesus's First Sermon and the Tradition of Debt Amnesty -- Credit, Debt and Money : Their Social and Private Contexts -- Part II : SOCIAL ORIGINS OF DEBT : -- The Anthropology of Debt, from Gift Exchange to Wergild Fines -- Creditors as Predators : The Anthropology of Usury -- Origins of Commercial Interest in Sumer's Palaces and Temples -- Rural Usury as a Lever to Privatize Land and Impose Bondage -- Part III : THE BRONZE AGE INVENTS USURY, BUT COUNTERS ITS ADVERSE EFFECTS : -- War, Debt and amar-gi in Sumer : 2400 BC -- Urukagina proclaims amar-gi : 2350 BC -- Sargon's Akkadian Empire and its Collapse : 2300-2100 BC -- Lagash Revives under Gudea and his Debt Cancellation : 2130 BC -- Trade, Enterprise and Debt in Ur III : 2111-2004 BC -- Isin Rulers replace Ur III and proclaim níg-si-sá: 2017-1861 BC -- Diffusion of Trade via Assyrian Merchants : 1900-1825 BC -- Privatizing Mesopotamia's Intermediate Period : 2000-1600 BC -- Hammurabi's Laws and mīšarum Edicts : 1792-1750 BC -- Freeing the Land and its Cultivators from Predatory Creditors -- Samsuiluna's and Ammisaduqa's mīšarum Edicts : 1749 and 1646 BC -- Social Cosmology of Babylonia's Debt Cancellations -- Usury and Privatization in the Periphery : 1600-1200 BC -- From the Dawn of the Iron Age to the Rosetta Stone : 1200-196 BC -- Part IV : THE BIBLICAL LEGACY : -- Judges, Kings and Usury : 8th and 7th Centuries BC -- Biblical Prophets Call for Debt Cancellation -- The Babylonian Impact on Judaic Debt Laws -- From Religious Covenant to Hillel -- Christianity Spiritualizes the Jubilee Year as the Day of Judgment -- The Byzantine Echo -- The Zenith and Decline of Byzantium : 945-1204 -- Epilogue -- Western Civilization is rooted in the Bronze Age near east.

The author explores the economies of ancient civilizations and discusses their relevance in the twenty-first century. The author describes how interest-bearing debt was invented in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, and then disseminated to the ancient world. What the Bronze Age rulers understood was that avoiding economic instability required regular royal debt cancellations. This book documents dozens of these these royal edicts, traces the archaeological record and history of debt, and describes how societies have dealt with (or failed to deal with) the proliferation of debts that cannot be paid.--adapted from publisher's description.

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