Construirea statului prin controlul datoriilor. Chezăşia şi relaţiile contractuale în Ţara Românească în sec. XV-XVII. Partea I
The Construction of the State through the Control of Financial Liabilities. The Legal Guarantees in Wallachia from the XVth to the XVIIIth Centuries.

Summary/Abstract: The article studies the uses of legal guarantees in the juridical practices, in Wallachia, in the XVth and XVIth centuries (the second part will continue the same analysis for the XVIIth century). It starts by highlighting the fragmentary character of the available documentation. The very term designating the practice made its appearance in two types of official documents issued by the prince’s chancellery: those regulating the commercial relations with the Transylvanian cities, and those referring to civil law suites involving foreign merchants and debts towards the Turks. Across the entire period of time covered in the article, the practice of the legal guarantees was confined to the sphere of commercial affairs, being employed mainly as a devise for regulating money liabilities. After the integration of Wallachia into the orbit of Otoman domination, accompanied by the reorientation of the agrarian production towards the larger market of the empire, the diversification of legal activities led to the generalization of the practice of legal guarantees. The main thesis of the article is that the practice in question can be studied as a privileged revealing example of the overall institutional transformations induced, in the Wallachian society, by the need to respond to the pressures of Otoman domination. The legal guarantees are used by the prince with the task of raising the efficiency of the taxation system.

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