The black years and red numbers of Ivan Černe, mayor of Tomaj in the middle of the eighteenth century: rural debt and credit relations

Abstract

The paper provides an insight into the nature  and mechanisms of credit-debt relationships in  the Slovenian countryside, basing on the case of  the mayor in Tomaj and relying on records of  real estate transactions between peasants in the  Devin manor (Karst) in the eighteenth century.  It reveals that peasant resorted to debt before  the nineteenth century, that lenders from diffe- rent social classes operated in the countryside,  that peasants used official credit procedures,  that borrowing could originate from economic  agency, and that large dowries and ill-fated  ventures did not necessarily sway the property  of a large peasant, such as the mayors in the  Karst at that time.