The Moralization of Credit and the Rise and Fall of the Debtors' Prison.

This article investigates the role of morality in financial contract enforcement, specifically the historical abolition of imprisonment for debt. In the late eighteenth century, creditors' right to arrest and detain debtors for default was taken for granted. By the middle of the nineteenth century this power was widely and permanently revoked. Using archival evidence, this article shows how changes in creditor-debtor interactions, macroeconomic dynamics, and political rights generated new moral understandings of borrowing, lending, and default. The shifting moralization of credit in turn reshaped the policy and practice of debt collection. The history of the debtors' prison and the sociology of morality have implications for the analysis of the non-contractual basis of contract, as well as for contemporary financial politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]