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The Check Is in the Mail
Topics: Arts-GeneralArts-GeneralEducation-Schools, Libraries, MuseumsFinance-Financial ManagementHistory-Business HistoryFinancial products of the past century such as the installment plan, credit cards, and home mortgages can make the existence of personal credit seem like a relatively recent development. An exhibit at the Baker Library | Bloomberg Center tells the story of how those now-familiar innovations came to be — but it also travels back in time to show that the concept of credit has been around as long as commerce itself.
“Credit is often portrayed as the new disease of the 20th century, yet people have been buying on credit for centuries,” says Caitlin Anderson, the exhibit’s curator and a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Center for History and Economics. “It just didn’t look the way it does now.”
Wonderfully detailed woodcuts, engravings, and other prints depict the mixed societal feelings around the use of personal credit and offer a history of its evolution, from the first monte pietatis (or “sacred pawnshops”) in 15th-century Italy to the intricate ledgers kept by American merchants at a time when hard currency was often scarce. Period documents reveal a fascinating level of intimate detail in how a creditor’s reliability was assessed. “You start to get a real, not abstract, image of instruments of credit,” Anderson comments. “As a historian I love the glimpses into lost business structures and lost lives.”
Organized by Baker Library Historical Collections, “Buy Now, Pay Later: A History of Personal Credit” is on display through June 3 and can be viewed online at www.library.hbs.edu/hc/credit/.
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