Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2016
Numerous archival documents show how the suspension of payments by Philip II, in September 1575, on the contracts with Genoese bankers (asientos) induced a freeze of the domestic credit market in Castile through the bankers’ intermediation for asientos and the credit interconnections. Commercial fairs stopped, banks failed and trade suffered while the king granted legal protection to the Genoese bankers. The evidence strikingly confirms that by his strategy, Philip II was able to remove the de facto ceiling on the domestic debt (juros) imposed by the fixed revenue commitment of the Castilian cities in the Cortes. The agreement with the bankers was signed in December 1577 immediately after the cities had agreed to the doubling of their commitment.
La documentación archivística muestra que el decreto de suspensión de consignaciones de 1575-77 paralizó el mercado de crédito de Castilla por la estrecha relación que había entre los asientos de los banqueros del rey y el crédito local. Durante esos años, las ferias dejaron de celebrarse, muchos bancos locales quebraron y el comercio sufrió una grave parálisis, pero el rey no dudó en proteger a sus banqueros de sus acreedores castellanos. La documentación confirma que gracias a esta estrategia, Felipe II logró romper el techo de su deuda pública (juros) que dependía de la contribución fiscal de las ciudades reunidas en las Cortes de Castilla. El acuerdo con los banqueros no se firmó hasta Diciembre de 1577, sólo inmediatamente después de que las ciudades hubiesen aceptado duplicar su contribución.
Financial support was received from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain) Project ECO2012-38028, Project HAR2012-39034-C03-02. Chamley gratefully acknowledges the support of the Banco Santander through a Chair of Excellence at the University Carlos III.
Departamento de Ciencias Sociales and Instituto Figuerola, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Calle Madrid, 126, 28903 Getafe, Madrid, Spain. carlos.alvarez@uc3m.es
Department of Economics, Boston University, 270 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215, USA. chamley@bu.edu
Please note a has been issued for this article.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.