Louise E. Walker

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.