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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. An Empire of Debts? Spain and Its Colonial Realm

Author : Regina Grafe

Published in: A World of Public Debts

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter shows that by the eighteenth century, Spain had developed in its colonies a system based on religious endowments, merchant guilds, and a transfer network of public monies that proved an effective way to politically negotiate, credit-finance, and execute the necessary intertemporal and interspatial transfers to sustain a vast territorial empire while burdening the central state with surprisingly little formal debt for a power of that size. Spain and its empire thus had a very different public debt regime than contemporary Britain or France. The chapter thus concludes that imposing such an Anglo-French-centric normative view of public finance was precisely the source of the financial and fiscal woes of Latin American republics in the nineteenth century.

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previous chapter Correction to: A World of Public Debts

next chapter Publicity, Debt, and Politics: The Old Regime and the French Revolution

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Title: An Empire of Debts? Spain and Its Colonial Realm
Author: Regina Grafe
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: A World of Public Debts
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-48793-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-48794-2

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48794-2_1

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