Money Laundering and Financial Crime in the 1400s around the time of the invention of the printing press - what was going on?

by Boppityboop

Hi all! I hope I can get a good conversation going, please let me know if I can be more specific. I am doing research for something I'm writing and I'm hitting a dead end. I work in Anti Money Laundering but while I understand modern Laundering, and the origins of that, I have a blind spot regarding older financial crime. I believe i can figure out enough about the economy of the time to invent potential crimes, but I would like to know more specific information.

To that effect, what can you tell me about financial crime at the time, and if it was affected by the invention of printing in Europe?

EdHistory101

Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.

Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.

For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.