| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence. By Bruce H. Mann. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. viii, 344 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-674-00902-9.)

Bruce H. Mann is professor of both law and history, and that expertise shows throughout this fine study. He successfully blends an examination of bankruptcy law in the colonies, Great Britain, and the new United States with an analysis of the political and cultural debate over the meaning of failure. As the Atlantic world of increasingly complex commercial networks grew, Americans shifted the definition of insolvency "from sin to risk, from moral failure to economic failure" (p. 5). Men of commerce claimed these labels for themselves, however—many believed that farmers and others overtaken by poverty suffered because of the personal failings that religious leaders and others had railed against for centuries. But in the new world of impersonal market forces, risk and debt were deemed necessary if the economy was to grow—many came to believe that entrepreneurs who took chances to nurture that growth should not be treated as criminals when events conspired against them.

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