Resumen de National credit and the international financial market: the Spanish debt and its foreign bondholders, 1820-1834
This article examines the ways in which the financial polemic created by the Spanish Cortes bonds helped to shape notions around international credit and state reputation in the 1820s and 1830s. It also explores its impact in the design of the emerging modern financial markets centred on London and Paris. The Cortes bonds were foreign loans contracted by the Spanish government during the liberal Triennium (1820–1823), subscribed by European investors and rejected by King Ferdinand VII. The article focuses on the actions, opinions and attitudes of their foreign bondholders. The crisis of the Cortes bonds promoted the formation of a distinctive rhetoric around foreign debt that was relevant not only for the Spanish case, but also for the modern discourse and practice of international finance.
