Overview

What are fallen tyrants owed? What makes debt illegitimate? And when is bankruptcy moral? Drawing on new archival sources, this book shows how Latin American nations have wrestled with the morality of indebtedness and insolvency since their foundation, and outlines how their history can shed new light on contemporary global dilemmas. With a focus on the early modern Spanish Empire and modern Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, and based on archival research carried out across seven countries, Odious Debt studies 400 years of history and unearths overlooked congressional debates and understudied thinkers. The book shows how discussions on the morality of debt and default played a structuring role in the construction and codification of national constitutions, identities, and international legal norms in Latin America. This new history of the moral economy of the Hispanic World from the 1520s to the 1920s illuminates contemporary issues in international law and international relations. Latin American jurists developed a global critique of economics and international law that continues to generate pressing questions about debt, bankruptcy, reparations, and the pursuit of a moral global economy.

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9780192888280

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Edward Jones Corredera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law & Assistant Lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. He received his PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2019. His articles have appeared in the English Historical Review, the Journal of Early Modern History, and Global Intellectual History. He has been a Fellow at the Huntington Library and the Residencia de Estudiantes, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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