Hunting for Hollanders: The community responsibility system, trade sanctions, and public debt in the late‐medieval Low Countries

Abstract To persuade creditors to lend, cities in the Low Countries relied on a community responsibility system that made all citizens personally liable for public debt. This exposed itinerant citizens to significant risks: their merchandise could be confiscated by creditors, and they could even be imprisoned for debt. Although it is usually difficult to assess how such sanctions were enforced in practice, this study examines a unique account of a group of creditors actively pursuing repayment. Their principal debt collector was a monk of the Carthusian order who travelled tirelessly throughout the Lower Rhine region in search of inhabitants of the county of Holland. This monk‐turned‐bounty‐hunter primarily targeted merchants and their goods but also sought to seize financial instruments and real estate owned by Hollanders. Whilst existing literature emphasizes reputation‐based mechanisms to explain polities’ access to credit, this evidence suggests that sanction‐based mechanisms were equally important: reprisals proved effective in recovering debts. Considering that the community responsibility system exposed merchants to sanctions, its survival into the early modern period is quite striking. I argue that the creation of public debt secured political and economic privileges that cities valued more highly than the safety of their merchants.