A revolution in commercial personhood -- Hard contracts and hard money: commerce, honor, and debt imprisonment in the Revolution -- The blessing of being judged: bankruptcy and the Napoleonic Codes -- The paradoxes of failure -- Risky business: banqueroute, faillite, and the culture of credit -- A palace of debt: constructing the debtors' prison -- The economy of discredit: Jean-Baptiste Bayle-Mouillard and the crusade against debt -- Imprisonment -- Remaking the commercial person -- Bankruptcies without bankrupts: commercial personhood in an age of speculation -- A discount on the future: 1848 and the remaking of financial responsibility -- Epilogue.
