La moneda en Mexico, 1750-1920 (review)

La moneda en México, 1750-1920. Edited by JOSÉ ANTONIO BATIZ VAZQUEZ and JOSÉ ENRIQUE COVARRUBIAS. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1998. Maps. Tables. Figures. Bibliographies. 234 pp. Paper.

The editors of this volume characterize it as a "university manual" that examines the serpentine development of monetary systems in Mexico from the late colonial period through the revolution. In the introduction, José Bátiz Vázquez and José Enrique Covarrubias, both renowned experts in economic history, present a conceptual discussion of the characteristics of money and review approaches to studying money in Mexico since the nineteenth century. The essays by Horst Pietschman, Barbara Tenenbaum, Rina Ortiz Peralta, Bátiz Vázquez, and Francisco Borja Martínez are reproduced from ealier published works, and those by Covarrubias, Javier Torres Medina, Alma Parra, and Juan Fernando Matamala appear for the first time. The essays generally either examine the circulation (for payment and as credit) or the production (that is, mining, minting, printing, counterfeiting) of money.

Pietschmann reviews recent research on credit and regional commerce for the period 1750 to 1810, arguing that the sharp contrast between the northern region awash in silver and free trade and the south with capital flight and scarce specie calls for reassessment of the independence movements taking into account regional market differences. Tenenbaum uses the Memorias de hacienda to examine the negotiation of the internal debt in the early national money market, suggesting that the very instability of the successive governments ensured their continued access to credit as lenders held off public bankruptcy to ensure repayment. In perhaps the most dynamic of the essays, Covarrubias delves into the papers of various ministries and suggests that a "syndrome of imaginary money" pushed the colonial government to mint copper coins, but the need for informal monetary instruments in daily circulation for petty commerce persisted nonetheless. Torres Media picks up the copper story through publications and documents from the mid-1830s, when abundant counterfeit coins in circulation affected price indexes and devalued genuine copper money. Ortiz Peralta, Parra and Matamala use sources from various archives to examine the diversification of the minting process through regional Casas de Moneda, which were largely independent in the last years of the colony, sometimes run by private (and foreign) companies beyond even local government control, and only brought under federal jurisdiction in the 1870s. The last two essays rely on published secondary sources. Bátiz Vázquez provides an overview of the history of printed money, which debuted with the nation and suffered from the turbulence of the nineteenth century. Before the creation of the Banco de México in 1925, federal, state, and private authorities issued paper currency, a process which reached a peak of confusion during the revolution when each army and government printed its own money. And finally, Borja Martínez investigates debate during the Díaz administration about monetary reform and "monometalismo," culminating in the adoption of the gold standard in 1905.

There is, unfortunately, no concluding chapter to discuss how the separate essays interact and identify important continuities and breaks in the development of the monetary system. Looking at the essays together highlights the interrelationships between levels of fiscal governance, commerce, and different economic sectors. The need for credit institutions and regulations increased when specie was scarce or easily counterfeited. Regional minting of copper arose from the demands of local consumption spending. Regional casas de moneda were tied to the mining sector that supplied them, and miners were tied to the merchant community that provisioned them. In short, this volume is wide in its scope and coverage of monetary history from the colonial period to the revolution. Most of the essays are grounded in complicated documentary evidence, and all should serve economic historians of Latin America well.

MARIE FRANCOIS, Auburn University

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