Description
Book SynopsisPawning was a common credit mechanism in Mexico City in the 19th century. A two-tiered sector of public and private pawnbrokers provided collateral credit. This book shows how Mexican women depended on credit to run their households since the Bourbon era and how the collateral credit business of pawnbroking developed into a profitable enterprise.
Trade Review"Both for what she narrates explicitly about everyday life and what she suggests implicitly about the historiography, consumerism, and patriarchy, Marie Francois has written a significant and thought-provoking book that all Mexican scholars should read and ponder."—William H. Beezley,
Hispanic American Historical Review
“Francois addresses an important issue that has never received much attention. She paints a vivid picture of an urban commerce dominated by women and made possible by the credit secured through pawnbroking. One of the works’ strengths is its multidisciplinary approach; it combines business and gender history, which should make it appealing to a wider variety of scholars. It is highly recommended.”—Jeremy Baskes,
The Historian
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Hocking the Private in Public: Credit Policy, Housekeeping, and Status, 1750-1840; 2. Collateral Lending: Pulperias and the Monte de Piedad, 1750-1840; 3. Collateral Living: Consumption, Anxious Liberals, and Daily Life, 1830-80; 4. Brokering Interests: Casas de Empeno and an Expanded Monte de Piedad, 1830-75; 5. Positivist Housekeeping: Domesticity, Work, and Consumer Credit, 1880-1910; 6. Porfirian Paradoxes: Profit versus Regulation, Capital versus Welfare; 7. A Material Revolution: Militancy, Policy, and Housekeeping, 1911-20; Conclusion: Housekeeping, Pawnbroking, and Politics; Epilogue: Still A Culture of Everyday Credit
