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“Juliette Levy’s study of informal credit networks before the rise of formal financial institutions and their role in the development of Yucatán’s commercial agriculture makes an important contribution not only to Mexico’s economic history but also to the understanding of the role of traditional personal finance in other premodern economies, such as the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.” —Fariba Zarinebaf “The Making of a Market is a work with high intellectual standards and is written in engaging and pleasant prose. It offers a relevant contribution to the social sciences, especially in regard to the social nature of credit markets. Juliette Levy illustrates, with concrete examples, how social interactions and economic decisions articulate the early formation of a financial system.” —Gustavo Del Angel, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas,A.C. “This is a thoughtful econometric analysis of the development of credit markets in late nineteenth-century Yucatán, Mexico. Juliette Levy’s argument is at once straightforward and innovative. Levy is certainly not the first scholar to make use of Yucat án’s rich notarial archives, but no one has made better or more systematic use of this type of documentation.” —Allen Wells, Bowdoin College During the nineteenth century, Yucatán moved effectively from its colonial past into modernity, transforming from a cattle-ranching and subsistence-farming economy to a booming export-oriented agricultural economy. Yucatán and its economy grew in response to increasing demand from the United States for henequen, the local cordage fiber. This henequen boom has often been seen as another regional and historical example of overdependence on foreign markets and extortionary local elites. In The Making of a Market, Juliette Levy argues instead that local social and economic dynamics were at the root of the region’s development. She shows how credit markets contributed to the boom before banks (and bank crises) existed and how people borrowed before the creation of institutions designed specifically to lend. As the intermediaries in this lending process, notaries became unwitting catalysts of Yucatán’s capitalist transformation. By focusing attention on the notaries’ role in structuring the mortgage market rather than on formal institutions such as banks, this study challenges the easy compartmentalization of local and global relationships and of economic and social relationships. Juliette Levy is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. Cover illustration: Pedro Diego Alvarado Rivera, Agaves con cielo azul, 2004. Oil on canvas, reproduced courtesy of the artist. The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania www.psupress.org ...

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