Banking History and Archives in Latin America

In recent years, business history has become a rich and varied terrain for research in Latin America. In this essay, I will present an overview of key aspects of banking history in the region, with an emphasis on the sources that are available in Argentina and Mexico. The extensive archives that have been built up in both countries offer historians the opportunity to study an array of topics: histories of individual banks; the evolution of banking systems; the relation between banking firms and industrial and agricultural development; the role of banks in government finance; the unique historical trajectories of central banks; the rise and relative decline of state-development banks; and the complex history of foreign banks in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present.