Nowadays Social and Economic History takes for granted that private credit was present in rural societies through time and geography.

Many historical researches display a society with plenty of debtors, amongst whom people from all social conditions are found. From this follows that debtors were not necessarily rich or necessarily poor people. However, to which extent can credit have influenced specific enrichment or impoverishment processes, processes that in the long term established social differentiations which shaped the specific historical evolution of each society ? Credit systems regulating access to money varied from region to region, and also changed inside them through time. What characteristics credit institutions had, and how different members and groups of the population could be related to each other through these institutions, could have decisively influenced in the composition of social groups itself, and their evolution through time. This seminar aspires to put researches on various times and countries on the role played by credit in the rural world in common. It is pretended to gather researches following the described view, for it is assumed that only the compared perspective will allow the validation of work hypotheses proposed in each specific case.