Servants as Creditors : Navigating the Moral Economy of an Early Modern Aristocratic Household
In this article, we argue that servants working for Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie (1622–1686) were part of an intricate system of economic and social dependencies. Focusing on the indebtedness of the aristocracy to its workers, we examine how deferred payment of wages opened up for negotiations between servant and master, and suggest that servants became de facto creditors to their master. In
