YSI – Economic History Graduate Webinar: Damian Clavel

Damian Clavel, Post-doctoral Fellow at Oxford University, will present his work: A Miskitu Loan in the City of London?

Abstract:
This paper provides a case study centered on George Frederic, the king of the Miskitu (in present Honduras and Nicaragua) in the first decades of the 19th century. Putting together scattered archival material found on both sides of the Atlantic reveals how this particular American Indigenous polity sought to finance its political and commercial independence through the London-based capital market. Concentrating on a marginal actor seldom considered by economic historians allows moving away from Eurocentric historiographies studying early dynamics of financial and commercial globalization. It also sheds light on the global financial influence American Indigenous actors sought to have in a politically and commercially reshaped Atlantic world.