Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America

by Edward Jones Corredera

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192888280
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/21/2025
Series:	The History and Theory of International Law
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.45(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Edward Jones Corredera, Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. The Origins of Odious Debt2. Sancho Panzaâs Promised Land: Spainâs Default on its American Debts3. A History of Forgiveness: Moral Bankruptcy in Mexico4. Fratricide and Redemption: Gran Colombiaâs Debt to Simón Bolívar5. The Armed Debtor: The Utility of Bankruptcy in Argentina6. Sacred Debt and Just War: Moral Economy beyond International LawConclusion

Editorial Reviews

"Edward Jones Corredera, the author of this brilliant book, takes a rigorous historical look at a crucial subject, where international law intersects with politics, religion, culture, moral economy, and finance. An essential reading for anyone who wishes to know in depth not only the irruption of Spanish American countries in the world scene, but, more broadly, the intellectual assumptions on which international relations in the modern world were founded." — Javier Fernández-Sebastián, Professor of History of Political Thought at the University of the Basque Country

"Odious Debt is an important interdisciplinary contribution to the global intellectual history of international law, the political economy of foreign debts, and the modern inception of Latin America in international society. Edward Jones Corredera´ s superb book illuminates the importance of foreign debts for the global history and political economy of international law, and the regional history of constitutional building in Latin America. A must read for international lawyers, historians, IR scholars, and political economists." — Juan Pablo Scarfi, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Catholic University of Chile

"Odious Debt is an illuminating work of intellectual history. The book is longue dure´ e and encompasses the entire Hispanic world, and it intervenes in multiple bodies of scholarship, including Latin American independence, the history of international law, and, naturally, the history of (postcolonial) debt. Odious Debt is a very refreshing intervention in the intellectual history of Latin American independence in how it focuses political economy as both a theme and material context of political thought. Moreover, one of the book's most valuable contributionsis in helping to build an earlier history of Latin American international law, rooted before the mid-nineteenth century." — Peter Morgan, Hispanic American Historical

From the Publisher