Did the economies of the early modern Iberian monarchies lag behind because of the lack of financial institutions? Was the economic backwardness of nineteenth-century Latin America and the Iberian metropoles the consequence of financial institutions ill-suited to economic growth? Were credit mechanisms accessible and affordable before the modern era? How did public finances and taxation affect private credit? These and many other questions regarding finances and credit will be discussed in the two sessions of the workshop Financial institutions in the early modern Iberian monarchies , an event hosted by the European University Institute through the project Colonial legacies, invisible institutions, and financial markets in Latin America (and beyond) .
On the 27th of September 2021, eight early-stage researchers from European and Latin American universities and research centres will meet for the first time to discuss the functioning and performance of financial mechanisms, institutions, and actors in the early modern Iberian monarchies. A wide array of topics will be examined, from female convents and misericórdias to fiscal treasuries, from Genoa to the Rio de la Plata, from the mid-sixteenth century to the first decades of the nineteenth century.
All these issues will be explored and discussed with a view to contest the alleged inexistence/inefficiency of the Iberian financial systems and to reconstruct how they worked. Every participant will present his/her topic for 15 minutes. Questions, comments, and criticism will follow.
This first session is a preparatory meeting for the second part of the workshop, which will take place at the European University Institute in Florence, on the 21st and 22nd of October.