Asientos as sinews of war in the composite superpower of the 16th century

Debt policy under constraints: Philip II, the Cortes and Genoese bankers

Carlos Alvarez-Nogal and Christophe Chamley

European Review of Economic History, 2021, vol. 25, issue 4, 703-722

Abstract: The full analysis of the text of a contract, asiento, between Philip II of Spain and a Genoese merchant–banker details how in this pre-modern composite state, merchant–bankers acted as agents of the Crown who gathered many scattered sources of income to the Crown and transformed them into large and regular cash flows, mesadas, for the army. Because of the uncertain availability of these sources, the contract provided flexibility to both parties and legal assistance to the banker who reported to accountants for audit and, if necessary, the charge of an interest at about 1 percent per month.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/heaa029 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:25:y:2021:i:4:p:703-722.

Access Statistics for this article

European Review of Economic History is currently edited by Christopher M. Meissner, Steven Nafziger and Alessandro Nuvolari

More articles in European Review of Economic History from European Historical Economics Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().