Reforming the paper life of property was thus a preoccupation of mortgage reform proponents. Plans ranged from fundamental administrative overhaul, such as combining the diverse bureaus involved in the registration of acts pertaining to property into one public “central archive,” to the reorganization of the columns formatting data on the sheets of existing registries. Decourdemanche’s treatise contained pages of sample sheets that demonstrated how a revised system of registration could work in coordination with the cadastre to make the recording and referencing of information on land parcels a simple matter of rapid cross-referencing. (Figure 2) A proposal from Jean-Louis Langlois, a deputy from the department of the Eure in 1848, aimed to our civil laws to agree with commercial practice” and described directories that “modify would combine the civil registry, the cadastre, and the mortgage registry. These directories would not merely link the personal credit of the individual to the real credit of land; by assembling different ways of knowing about borrowers and their security, they created a different kind of asset, ensuring that person of the borrower would weigh significantly in the “the decision of the creditor.” The compilation and arrangement of information in pursuit of a rationalized property and mortgage registry was not a simple matter, nor one to be taken lightly. The form of property’s existence on paper helped shape its legal standing. Figure 2: A page from the reformed property registry of Alphonse Decourdemanche, Du danger (1829). Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France de prêter sur hypothèque When considering the question of potential reorganization of mortgage administration in 1841, the Ministry of Finance not only addressed the complex expertise and legal responsibilities that would necessarily be required of new positions, but critiqued the material practices that would result: One of the advantages of the system currently in place is that acts are transcribed and mortgages registered on directories provided by the administration, each page numbered and signed by the president of the civil tribunal and closed daily by the
Reforming the paper life of property was thus a preoccupation of mortgage reform proponents. Plans ranged from fundamental administrative overhaul, such as combining the diverse bureaus involved in the registration of acts pertaining to property into one “central public archive,” to the reorganization of the columns formatting data on the sheets of existing registries. Decourdemanche’s treatise contained pages of sample sheets that demonstrated how a revised system of registration could work in coordination with the cadastre to make the recording and referencing of information on land parcels a simple matter of rapid cross-referencing. (Figure 2) A proposal from Jean-Louis Langlois, a deputy from the department of the Eure in 1848, aimed to “modify our civil laws to agree with commercial practice” and described directories that would combine the civil registry, the cadastre, and the mortgage registry. These directories would not merely link the personal credit of the individual to the real credit of land; by assembling different ways of knowing about borrowers and their security, they created a different kind of asset, ensuring that “the person of the borrower would weigh significantly in the decision of the creditor.” The compilation and arrangement of information in pursuit of a rationalized property and mortgage registry was not a simple matter, nor one to be taken lightly. The form of property’s existence on paper helped shape its legal standing. Figure 2: A page from the reformed property registry of Alphonse Decourdemanche, Du danger de prêter sur hypothèque (1829). Source: Bibliothèque Nationale de France When considering the question of potential reorganization of mortgage administration in 1841, the Ministry of Finance not only addressed the complex expertise and legal responsibilities that would necessarily be required of new positions, but critiqued the material practices that would result: One of the advantages of the system currently in place is that acts are transcribed and mortgages registered on directories provided by the administration, each page numbered and signed by the president of the civil tribunal and closed daily by the
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