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Banking History and Archives in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Carlos Marichal
Carlos Marichal
Affiliation:
CARLOS MARICHAL is professor of Latin American economic history at El Colegio de Mexico.
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Extract

In recent years, business history has become a rich and varied terrain for research in Latin America. In this essay, I will present an overview of key aspects of banking history in the region, with an emphasis on the sources that are available in Argentina and Mexico. The extensive archives that have been built up in both countries offer historians the opportunity to study an array of topics: histories of individual banks; the evolution of banking systems; the relation between banking firms and industrial and agricultural development; the role of banks in government finance; the unique historical trajectories of central banks; the rise and relative decline of state-development banks; and the complex history of foreign banks in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present.

Type
Archival Note
Information
Business History Review , Volume 82 , Special Issue 3: Business in Latin America , Autumn 2008 , pp. 585 - 602
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2008

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References

1 A rising number of references to Latin American banking history literature can be found in the Financial History Review, particularly in the annual bibliographical reviews prepared by Serge Noiret.

2 The first important study on Brazilian regional banks was that of Flavio Saes, Crédito e bancos no desenvolvimento da economía paulista, 1850–1930 (Sāo Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar. A more recent major contribution is by Hanley, Anne G., Native Capital: Financial Institutions and Economic Development in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1850–1920 (Stanford, 2005)Google Scholar.

3 Ludlow, Leonor, “El debate en torno a la banca de fomento: el proyecto del gobernador de Zacatecas Francisco García (1829–1832),” in Historia del pensamiento ecónomico: Del mercantilismo al liberalismo, vol. 2, ed. del Pilar, María Martínez López-Cano, and Yuste, Carmen (Mexico, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

4 On this early bank, see the classic study by Potash, Robert A., The Banco de Avio de Mexico: A Study of Government Efforts to Develop Industry, 1821–1846 (Amherst, 1983)Google Scholar.

5 See the discussion of early banks in Ludlow, Leonor, ed., Temas a debate: Moneda y banca en México (Mexico City, 2006)Google Scholar.

6 The Web site of the Archive and Museum of the Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires is http://www.bapro.com.ar/museo/index2.htm.

7 Gerardo Marcelo Martí, “El Archivo del Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires,” Revista de Historia Económica de América Latina, no. 3 (Jan.-June 1995): 29–37.

8 Adelman, Jeremy, Frontier Development: Land, Labour and Capital on the Wheatlands of Argentina and Canada, 1890–1914 (Oxford, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Amaral, Samuel, The Rise of Capitalism on the Pampas: The Estandas of Buenos Aires, 1785–1870 (New York, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The best guide to the important French immigrant merchant community and to foreign investments in the period in Argentina is the study by Regalsky, Andrés, Mercaderes, inversores y elites: Las inversions francesas en Argentina, 1880–1914 (Buenos Aires, 2002)Google Scholar.

11 I wish to thank Liliana Cove of the Prebisch library as well as Professor Andrés Regalsky, leading expert on the history of Argentine banking, for information on these archival sources. For on-line information of the Biblioteca Prebisch see http://www.bera.gov.ar/index.asp.

12 See the detailed report that I prepared to save this library in the mid-1970s, “La Biblioteca Tornquist,” published in the collection Guía Para Investigations Históricas en la Argentina, Serie II, Bibliotecas, No. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1974). Anyone interested in receiving a digital copy can write me at .

13 For an overview, see Marichal, Carlos and Riguzzi, Paolo, “Bancos y banqueros europeos en México, 1864–1933,” in México y la economía atlántica (siglos XVIII–XX), ed. Ficker, Sandra Kuntz and Pietschmann, Horst (Mexico City, 2006), 207–37Google Scholar.

14 The Banamex is now owned by Citicorp, which was sufficiently impressed by the historical archive in Mexico that, in the year 2003, it carried out a worldwide survey of its other bank subsidiaries. The result revealed that there was no historical bank archive equivalent in quality to that of Banamex in any other country in which the banking group had offices.

15 Archivo Historico Banamex, Isabel la Católica 40, Mezzanine, Centro Histórico, C.P. 06000, México, D.F. Tels: 1226–4019, 1226–4840, 1226–4821, 1226–5161; Fax: 1226–5342; E-mail: .

16 An extensive review of the banking history literature in Mexico is found in del Angel, Gustavo and Marichal, Carlos, “Poder y crisis: Historiografia del crédito y la banca en México, siglos XIX–XX,” Historia Mexicana 52, no. 3 (2003): 677–724Google Scholar.

17 Several articles that analyze both this repository and others useful for banking history can be found in the Boletín de Fuentes para la Historia Económica de México, no. 5 (Sept.-Dec. 1991).

18 For some additional information, see Marichal, Carlos, “El papel de la banca de desarrollo en México,” Comercio Exterior: Revista de análisis económico 54 (2004): 812–15Google Scholar.

19 In 1995 I was invited to take a brief tour of the warehouse of the Banco de Comercio Exterior (located on the Cerro de la Estrella, Iztapalapa) and was impressed by the huge amount of well-organized documents. Though I have requested information repeatedly since then, I have received no response from bank officials. I hope the archive survives.

20 Gustavo del Angel has recently finished an official history of BBVA/Bancomer, the second-largest commercial bank in Mexico, and he reports that there are considerable historical records for this institution not open to researchers.

21 The persons in charge of the Archives of the Banco de México are Subgerente Lic. Victor Manuel Espinosa Mejía and Jefe del Archivo Histórico, Eduardo Cristiani Sierra. The address is Banco de Mexico, Piso 1, Subgerencia de Coordinatión de Archivos, Avenida 5 de Mayo, no 20, Col. Centro, México, DF 06059. Tel: 5237–2665.

22 For more details, see Triner, Gail, Banking and Economic Development: Brazil, 1889–1930 (New York, 2000)Google Scholar.

23 See the eleven volumes of Historia económica & história, de empresas (1998–2008) and the Web-site http://www.abphe.org.br/index.html.

24 The BNDES Web site is: http://www.bndes.gov.br/conhecimento/publicacoes/catalogo/livrosoanos.asp.

25 The Web site of the Casa de Moneda de Potosi is excellent: http://www.casanacionaldemoneda.org.bo/contacto.html. For information on the history of Bolivian banking, a good starting point is the book by Antonio Mitre, Los patriarcas de la plata: Estructura socioeconómica de la minería bolivian en el sigh XIX (Lima, 1981)Google Scholar.

26 See Quiroz, Alfonso W., Banqueros en conflicto: Estructura financiera y economía peruana, 1884–1930 (Lima, 1989)Google Scholar, and Domestic and Foreign Finance in Peru, 1850–1950: Financing Visions of Development (Pittsburgh, 1993)Google Scholar.

27 Speech given at the session entitled “Archivos de Empres a en América Latina” at the First Latin American Economic History Congress, Montevideo, 6 Dec. 2007 [originally in Spanish; my translation].

28 For detailed information on the history of Colombian monetary and banking history, see Adolfo Meisel's essays in El Banco de la República, Antecedenes, Evolutión, Estructura, 2 vols. (Bogotá, 1990)Google Scholar.

29 The program is being overseen by Carlos Zapata, director of the Banco de la República's historical archive at Bogotá, with the aid of a large staff and considerable investment.

30 Chatelain, Joseph, La Banque Nationale, son histoire, ses problèmes (Port au Prince, 1st ed. 1954, 2nd ed. 2005)Google Scholar.

31 Orbell, John and Turton, Alison, British Banking: A Guide to Historical Records (Aldershot, 2001)Google Scholar.

32 See the excellent Web site: http://www.rothschildarchive.org/ta/.

33 The Barings archive holds several hundred thousand letters of banking and commercial correspondence, according to Platt, D. C. M., Foreign Finance in Continental Europe and the USA, 1815–1870 (London, 1984), vii–viiiGoogle Scholar.

34 See the Web site catalogue: http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cats/13/1605.htm.

35 Joslin, David, A Century of Banking in Latin America (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

36 Broder, Albert and Marichal, Carlos, eds., La banque française en Amérique latine dans la première globalisation, 1870–1930 (Paris, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

37 See the European Association of Banking and Financial History Web site: http://www.eabh.info/.

38 Pohl, Manfred, Deutsche Bank Buenos Aires, 1887–1987 (Mainz, 1987)Google Scholar.

39 The historical holdings of the Deutsche Bank Archive are summarized in http://www.deutsche-bank.de/en/content/company/archives.htm. Unfortunately, the papers of the Disconto-Gesellschaft, the most important German bank prior to 1890 (which was involved in various Latin American loans and in some local banking firms in Argentina) were destroyed during the Great Depression after its merger with Deutsche Bank. Some other German banks have historical archives, although not on the same scale as Deutsche Bank. The Commerzbank has a major historical archive that may have some information on Latin America, although I do not know of any research that has been conducted there. Since it was part owner of the Hamburg South America Steamship Company from 1871, it is highly likely that some researchers have made use of its collection. For the Web site see: http://www.commerzbank.de/en/hauptnavigation/konzern/geschichte/geschichte.html.

40 Anaya, Luis, “Del Banco Alemán Transatlántico al Banco Mexicano de Comercio e Industria, 1902–1927,” in México y la Economía Atlántica, Siglos XVIII–XX, ed. Kuntz, Sandra and Pietschmann, Horst (Mexico City, 2006), 239–68Google Scholar.

41 Roldán, Inés, La banca de emisión en Cuba, 1856–1898 (Madrid, 2004)Google Scholar.

42 Drake, Paul W., The Money Doctor in the Andes: The Kemmerer Missions, 1923–1933 (Durham, N.C., 1989)Google Scholar.