Banco de San Carlos (Potosí)

Banco de San Carlos (Potosí), a mining bank in Potosí (1779–1825) that was the amplification of earlier credit institutions. The first of these was a private company created by leading azogueros (refiners) in 1746–1747 to provide loans and supplies. This establishment was taken under partial royal direction in 1752 as a banco de rescates, a bank that bought raw silver from the refiners, for cash, at a discount. It had mixed success. In 1779 Jorge Escobedo y Alarcón, governor of Potosí, resolved to take the bank fully into royal control as the Banco de San Carlos. It continued to buy silver at a discount and now also was charged with collecting the 10 percent crown royalty on silver produced. Fed by the discount, the loan fund grew large. Loans, however, were rarely invested productively, since the azogueros—the social elite among Potosí refiners, not known for their entrepreneurship—contrived to take most of the funds themselves.

See alsoBanking: Overview .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rose Marie Buechler, The Mining Society of Potosí, 1776–1810 (1981).

Guillermo Miro Delli-Zotti, El Real Banco de San Carlos de Potosí y la minería altoperuana colonial, 1779–1825 (Banco de España, 1991).

Additional Bibliography

Sánchez Gómez, Julio, Guillermo Claudio Mira Delli-Zotti, and Rafael Dobado. La savia del imperio: Tres estudios de economía colonial. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1997.

                                          Peter Bakewell