Louise E. Walker

This project analyzes conflicts over default, bankruptcy, and usury in modern Mexico. It examines how middle-class people navigated the changing moral and legal frameworks for borrowing and lending money in colonial courts like the Inquisition, in the chambers of 19th century judges, and in today’s Credit Bureau. Through analysis of legal theory, courtroom conflicts, and cultural understandings, it studies the everyday experiences and theoretical concepts that shaped the emergence of capitalism from the mid-1700s to the present. This long-term approach unearths the continuities, changes, and recurrences in the history of private property rights, moral economies, liberal economics, and the economic lives of middle-class people.

This project analyzes conflicts over economic justice in Mexico from the eighteenth century to the present. It examines how middle-class people navigated the changing legal rules and moral norms for borrowing and lending money in colonial courts, in the chambers of nineteenth-century judges, and in today’s Credit Bureau. It reveals that the everyday practices of ordinary people—rather than top-down policy—drove most economic change and shaped the emergence of capitalism. The long-term approach connects the late colony with the recent past to unearth the continuities, changes, and recurrences in the history of capitalism and economic life.