The Recife mercantile body and the merchants discredit in the early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

While many recent studies examine the forms of commercial accumulation, this article seeks to examine the effects of property and credit loss. This analysis examines this issue from four typical situations of a mercantile community that led their business to suspension. There is the hypothesis that businessmen community itself had control over their peers as an important source of discipline, able to curb beginners elements opportunistic behavior in the market and to defend the creditors interests against debtors.