Institute of Historical Research

Democracy, Autocracy and Sovereign Debt in Mexico and Brazil during the pre-1914 Globalisation

Leonardo Weller

(Fundação Getúlio Vargas, São Paulo)

Sovereign debt is a financial as well as a political topic. Politics shapes the way governments borrow and repay. The existing historical literature on the pre-1914 sovereign debt market focuses on creditors (the supply side) and assumes that autocratic regimes are more likely to default than democracies. We claim that this model is oversimplified. In order to propose an alternative model, we research several combinations between polity and credit records across major debtors (the demand side) from 1870 to 1914. This presentation analyses some preliminary results of this broad project. It addresses two specific cases: Brazil, an oligarchic regime whose records oscillated between good and bad depending on political stability; and Mexico, an autocratic and creditworthy regime whose capacity to pay deteriorated after a democratically-elected government took office.

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

Democracy, Autocracy and Sovereign Debt in Mexico and Brazil during the pre-1914 Globalisation

Leonardo Weller

(Fundação Getúlio Vargas, São Paulo)

Sovereign debt is a financial as well as a political topic. Politics shapes the way governments borrow and repay. The existing historical literature on the pre-1914 sovereign debt market focuses on creditors (the supply side) and assumes that autocratic regimes are more likely to default than democracies. We claim that this model is oversimplified. In order to propose an alternative model, we research several combinations between polity and credit records across major debtors (the demand side) from 1870 to 1914. This presentation analyses some preliminary results of this broad project. It addresses two specific cases: Brazil, an oligarchic regime whose records oscillated between good and bad depending on political stability; and Mexico, an autocratic and creditworthy regime whose capacity to pay deteriorated after a democratically-elected government took office.

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

Reindigenisation and Culture in the Andes (Nineteenth Century)

Adrian Pearce

(University College London)

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

Using Painted Maps as Evidence: Images in Colonial Mexico's Land Grant Proceedings

Ana Pulido-Rull

(University of Arkansas)

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

Imperial rivalries, insurgents and spies: Britain and Spain during Latin American Independence

Gregorio Alonso

(Leeds)

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

The Party of Order and Progress: The European revolutions of 1848 and the Mexican Conservative Party

Ed Shawcross

(University College London)

The study of conservatism has often been seen as a topic of secondary importance; historians have conventionally preferred to research groups that played a “progressive” role in society. This is particularly the case in Mexico where the Conservative Party, founded in 1849, was caricatured by its liberal opponents as supporting a blind reaction that looked backwards to Mexico’s colonial past. The defeat of conservatives by liberals in the War of Reform (1858-61) and again with the execution of the Emperor Maximilian followed by the collapse of the Second Mexico Empire (1867) saw this negative interpretation become embedded within Mexican national discourse and accepted by many historians. However, this paper argues that rather than focussing on Mexico’s past, conservatives proposed a path to modernity that embraced a distinctively post-1848 mode of politics. This was characterised by a technocratic vision of progress, the adoption of elements of democratic politics, and was influenced by events in Europe, particularly the example of Louis-Napoléon in France and the French Second Empire. Far from being caught up in a parochial obsession with national issues, Mexican conservatives understood themselves to be part of what they termed an “international reaction” against the ideas and doctrines of the European revolutions of 1848. This paper explores the international events and transnational currents of thought which influenced Mexican conservatism in the mid-nineteenth century.

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

Psychiatry in Context: the Problem of Degeneration in Brazil

Cristiana Fachinetti

(Fiocruz)

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

Slavery and Anti-Slavery in the Spanish American Republics during the Nineteenth Century

Marcela Echeverri

(Yale)

The history of freedom in the Atlantic world is generally portrayed as especially tied to Anglo-Atlantic liberalism. Indeed, for the Spanish American mainland the abolition of slavery is still a question largely unexplored. In part this is a result of the prevalent supposition that British diplomatic pressures paved the way for abolition in the emergent republics across the region. This paper will explain how focusing on Gran Colombia (including present day Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia) we can revise this classic assumption and show that, rather than seeing mainland Spanish America as peripheral to the history of Atlantic slavery and anti-slavery, historians should consider the region as the epicenter of larger historical dynamics that shaped the meaning of freedom in the American continent.

Marcela Echeverri is Assistant Professor in History at Yale University

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

Slavery and Anti-Slavery in the Spanish American Republics during the Nineteenth Century

Marcela Echeverri

(Yale)

The history of freedom in the Atlantic world is generally portrayed as especially tied to Anglo-Atlantic liberalism. Indeed, for the Spanish American mainland the abolition of slavery is still a question largely unexplored. In part this is a result of the prevalent supposition that British diplomatic pressures paved the way for abolition in the emergent republics across the region. This paper will explain how focusing on Gran Colombia (including present day Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia) we can revise this classic assumption and show that, rather than seeing mainland Spanish America as peripheral to the history of Atlantic slavery and anti-slavery, historians should consider the region as the epicenter of larger historical dynamics that shaped the meaning of freedom in the American continent.

Marcela Echeverri is Assistant Professor in History at Yale University

Latin American History seminar series

Institute of Historical Research

New Considerations behind the Fiscal Failure of the First Mexican Republic, 1824-1837

Luis Jauregui

(Instituto Mora, Mexico)

In the last four decades much has been written about the evolution and failure of the First Mexican Republic (1824-1835). Ever since Costeloe's seminal political history of the period, substantial research has concentrated on the fiscal innovations and their trajectory as well as their limitations which may have contributed to the failure of this form of government. The purpose of this paper (part of a larger research project) is to reassess the recent fiscal historiography of the period in order to offer a new interpretation on the performance of Mexico's treasury. Whereas other historians have emphasized differences between state treasuries by analyzing particular levies and fiscal instruments (alcabalas, tobacco, direct contributions and the so-called contingente), this research focuses on the role of the comisaras generals, ie. the federal government offices in the states of the new Mexican republic. It shows that the problems and eventual failure of the first Mexican federalism stem to a great extent from the administrative restrictions on these offices as well as from the limited state capacity of the general (central) government.

Luis Jauregui is Professor of Economic History at the Instituto de Investigaciones Doctor Jos Mara Luis Mora, Mexico City.

Latin American History seminar series