A Hispanic Interpretation of the British Crisis: Flórez Estrada and the Debate on the Banking Panic of 1825
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.The banking panic of 1825 took place a few years after the exile of almost the entire Spanish intellectual elite to the United Kingdom due to the reinstatement of Ferdinand's absolutism. Among them was Álvaro Flórez Estrada, a well-known author after his Examen imparcial de las disensiones de la América con la España (1811), who as a witness to the crisis ventured to publish Reflections experienced on the present mercantile distress in Great Britain and more or less affecting other nations on the Continent of Europe (London: Ridgway, 1826). The immediate success of the pamphlet (3,000 copies sold in the first three days) led to a French edition that same year, an Italian translation and several others in Spanish published in London, Guatemala and Mexico. Flórez Estrada argues that the financial crisis had its origins in the fall in the supply of gold and silver in Europe following the birth of the new Latin American republics. The Reflections became a reference for multiple discussions in the press and the British parliament. Less important was the pamphlet among the corpus of political economy authors of the time. In addition to the well-known response of Jean-Baptiste Say, we have only seen the interest of some Italian authors.
DOI: 10.16995/rhetm.24093
Author: José M. Menudo
Institution: Universidad Pablo de Olavide
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4414375017