This book analyzes a neglected but fascinating chapter in Anglo-Latin American relations, the disastrous 1822-25 investment boom. During this brief period, British investors lost £21 million in defaulted Latin America as an area for capital investment for a generation. Today Latin America owes its banking and other anxious international creditors over $400 billion, and amount that is unlikely to be repaid. Valuable lessons can be learned by studying the nineteenth-century antecedents of the current situation. Frank Griffith Dawson explores in depth the origins and consequences of the first Latin American debt crisis, interweaving economic details with the broader historical context of society, government, and diplomacy of the period. His wide-ranging discussion includes descriptions of the vicissitudes of the loans, bond issues, and speculative ventures in mining and agriculture, life styles of the various Latin American agents who were empowered to negotiate loans for the new states, the sometimes dishonest British banking and stock broking figured involved in the transactions, and the unfailing gullibility of the investing public. Dawson’s saga sheds light not only capital-exporting nation, but also on a London, when its institutions first began wholeheartedly to adapt themselves to their roles as the financial arbiters of the world. This readable and entertaining book will be of interest to students of Latin American and European economic history. It will also be instructive reading to politicians, stockbrokers, bankers, and lawyers who are attempting to deal with the consequences of the latest Latin American lending boom.

Carlos Marichal contends that the boom-and-bust cycles of Latin American foreign loans result mainly from the fluctuations of the world economy, rather than from errors made in Latin America itself. Marichal shows that the present debt crisis is only a part of an overall pattern in Latin American history--cycles of loan boom and subsequent debt crisis that are heavily influenced by fluctuations of international trade and capital flows. He also reveals the significant role played by those who implement debt policies. Examining the strategies of both lenders and borrowers, he makes it clear that foreign loan negotiations are not only financial tools but also political instruments with broad economic and social consequences. The book analyzes in detail the four major debt crises that took place in Latin America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marichal's focus is comparative, since the contracting of foreign loans and their repayment were problems common to virtually all nations of the region. He devotes special attention to explaining the links of these debt crises to the international financial panics of 1825, 1873, 1890, and 1929. The epilogue compares the debt crises of the past with the contemporary Latin American debt crisis.

Examining the causes of the acute Latin American debt crisis that began in mid-1982, North American analysts have typically focused on deficiencies in the debtor countries' economic policies and on shocks from the world economy. Much less emphasis has been placed on the role of the region's principal creditors--private banks--in the development of the crisis. Robert Devlin rounds out the story of Latin America's debt problem by demonstrating that the banks were an endogenous source of instability in the region's debt cycle, as they overexpanded on the upside and overcontracted on the downside. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A provocative and controversial look at Latin America as it stands at a crossroads, this book analyzes the complex economic and social roots of the debt crisis and evaluates the prospects for new development strategies for the 1990s. Dr. Wiarda begins by placing the regional economic crisis in the larger context of technological change, political upheaval, and the international economy. He then explores new choices and realities in inter-American relations and the role international lending agencies can take to assist Latin America in meeting the challenge of the next decade. The author suggests that "smokescreens and mirrors" have obscured the true nature of the crisis and, as a result, have skewed the policy debate.

Since 1981 Latin America has been in the midst of a protracted external debt crisis due, among other reasons, to emergency borrowing at record-high real interest rates and the decline in the region's export proceeds. Until now, most literature on the subject originated in industrial lender countries, whose primary concern is the impact of the debt