The Appropriation of Mexican Church Wealth by the Spanish Bourbon Government—The ‘Consolidación de Vales Reales’, 1805–1809

Hamnett, Brian R.

doi:10.1017/s0022216x00004430

Cited by 44 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(Riley 1980;Marichal 2007). As late as 1805 Spain took up a loan in Paris at 5.5 per cent (Hamnett 1969). By then, of course, all of Europe was scrambling for funds to continue the first intercontinental war of the modern age.…”

Section: Figure 2: Net Revenue Per Capita In European Countries and Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the process, deals were cut, interest in arrears cancelled and principals reduced, and in Mexico, for example, the actual administration of the 'expropriation' consumed forty-four per cent of the total yield, which remained in the local economy (Hamnett, 1969). In short, the crown's most blatant attempt at confiscation produced a negotiated outcome that shared the spoils by reducing the outstanding private debt which was to be converted into public borrowing.…”

Section: Investing In Coercion: Forced Loans Currency Manipulations mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Estimates for the investment of capital from ecclesiastical sources range from forty-four to fifty-nine million pesos in Mexico alone (Hamnett 1969). Even though, in the end, much of this was renegotiated, and the consolidation was called off before it affected smaller borrowers, the dislocation of credit markets was severe, and new lending much reduced.…”

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Bounded leviathan: Fiscal constraints and financial development in the Early Modern Hispanic world

Irigoin¹,

Grafe²

2013

Questioning Credible Commitment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:North's and Weingast's focus on the importance of a ruler's credible commitment to protecting property rights has become the standard approach to states' role in economic growth and been supported e.g. by the "legal origins" literature (LaPorta et al., 1998(LaPorta et al., , 2008 which argued that post-Glorious Revolution English institutions were particularly conducive to economic growth. But growth depends not only investor protection (legal capacity) but also the ability of the state to finance itself, "fiscal capacity". Persson, 2009, 2010) show that the protection of private property rights and that of public property rights to taxation are linked and likely co-evolutionary. However, the precise relation between the two is anything but clear. This paper argues that North and Weingast's model's one-sided focus on state coercion threatening private property rights has obscured the relation between coercion used in revenue collection and the role of fiscal capacity. Our very simple model shows that the relationship between fiscal capacity and legal capacity is not linear, especially in the phase of nation state building. Before 1800 states faced one of two very different central challenges. 1) States that already exhibited high levels of coercion had to try to keep in check the ruler's potential for predation as North and Weingast argued. 2) States that used very low levels of coercion faced a coordination problem instead of a predation issue. The case of Spain provides empirical evidence for the existence of states were an increase in coercion would have improved fiscal capacity, but high levels of legal capacity paradoxically prevented the ruler from adopting this path. Finally, we use financial market developments to show the serious welfare implications that resulted from such a lack of coordination and integration.

show abstract

Section: Figure 2: Net Revenue Per Capita In European Countries and Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Investing In Coercion: Forced Loans Currency Manipulations mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Bounded leviathan: Fiscal constraints and financial development in the Early Modern Hispanic world

Irigoin¹,

Grafe²

2013

Questioning Credible Commitment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Bibliography

2008

Climate and Society in Colonial Mexico

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Corruption and Justice in Colonial Mexico, 1650–1755

Rosenmüller

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Empire of Justice introductionCorruption today is a crucial concern for Latin America, and many nations have relatively clear definitions of the crime on the books. Yet corruption in the Spanish empire from roughly 1492 to the early 1800s differed. Theologians, legal experts, and laypeople debated the meaning and boundaries of corruption, and the limits of gift giving and bribery were malleable to some degree. Jurists weighed various judicial sources to assess the crime, as the crown was not the only authority producing rules. Instead, Spaniards appreciated the Roman and the canon (Church) law and their manifold interpreters. Their doctrines had to conform to natural law, which was essentially reason, as past generations understood that notion. In addition, the maxims revealed in the Bible coexisted with the royal mandates, such as the Law of the Indies (law for Spanish America), and the local customs, including the indigenous traditions.Latin American historians have always paid attention to canon and royal law and local customs, though English-speaking Latin Americanists have preferred focusing on social practices. Scholars, largely outside the United States, have also analyzed the actions of social networks composed of patrons and clients. Their contributions have greatly advanced our knowledge about justice in New Spain (colonial Mexico), although they have often overlooked the working of the law. Meanwhile, legal scholars have skillfully traced changing judicial concepts but often neglected their application in trials "on the ground." 1 This chapter focuses on the shifting definition of legality, because the Roman and canon laws (leges) constituted a crucial part of justice and were not strictly speaking theology. In Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 262, Herzog modifies this view in that in "all these dynamics, law mattered to an enormous degree." According to Yannakakis, The Art of Being, 118, "decisions of individual local magistrates rather than judicial precedent and previous case decisions determined the enactment of justice," and "justices ruled based on specific enactment or codified clause." Owensby, Empire of Law, 45, maintains that there were three main aspects of justice, the "derecho … the legal order ensuring 'good government,' the published ley, and the customs"; while Bianca Premo, "Custom Today: Temporality, Customary Law, and Indigenous Enlightenment," HAHR 94, no. 3 (2014): 355-380, traces innovations among the customs. Legal scholarship on the European ius commune is vast and often high quality; just to cite a few examples,

show abstract

The Appropriation of Mexican Church Wealth by the Spanish Bourbon Government—The ‘Consolidación de Vales Reales’, 1805–1809

Cited by 44 publications

References 4 publications

Bounded leviathan: Fiscal constraints and financial development in the Early Modern Hispanic world

Bounded leviathan: Fiscal constraints and financial development in the Early Modern Hispanic world

Bibliography

Corruption and Justice in Colonial Mexico, 1650–1755

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About