Tag: Baring Crisis

How Uruguay Helped Spark a Global Financial Crisis in 1890

Published on by CIGH Exeter
Races organized by the Montevideo Rowing Club in Montevideo Bay. The Hotel Nacional, in the background, was one of the greatest schemes of the National Company of Credit and Public Works. Victim of the 1890 crisis, the building was never operational, and the French manager stayed some years in the empty hotel waiting for an inauguration that never happened.
Races organized by the Montevideo Rowing Club in Montevideo Bay, c. 1890. The Hotel Nacional, in the background, was one of the greatest schemes of the National Company of Credit and Public Works. Victim of the 1890 crisis, the building was never operational, and the French manager stayed some years in the empty hotel waiting for an inauguration that never happened.

Alvaro Cuenca
Montevideo, Uruguay

Greece’s potential financial downfall and semi-colonial economic status monopolized the news this summer. Much ink has been spilled on the apocalyptic consequences the crisis might yet hold for European Union finances and for the global monetary system. However, much less is known of a similar situation that happened more than a hundred years before in Uruguay, the effects of which would also reverberate across the Atlantic to shake the very foundations of the global financial world. Continue reading “How Uruguay Helped Spark a Global Financial Crisis in 1890” →