Jecker Bonds

Jecker Bonds, promissory notes that provided a pretext for the French Intervention in Mexico (1862–1867). Jecker, Torre, and Company was one of three French banking houses in Mexico City. Late in 1859 the Conservative Miramón regime entered into a bond-conversion arrangement with Jecker. In return for ready cash not even totalling 1 million pesos, Miramón issued bonds whose value came to 15 million pesos. Jecker agreed to pay 3 percent interest on these bonds over a five-year period in return for 15 percent of the face value of each new bond at the moment of conversion of an old bond for a new one. The Duc de Morny, half-brother of Napoleon III, had been Jecker's partner at the time of the issue. His close collaborator, Count Pierre Dubois de Saligny, French minister in Mexico (1860–1863), pressed the Jecker claims. The Juárez government, however, refused to recognize the Jecker debt. But afterwards, the Mexican Empire paid Morny's claim in regular installments until his death in 1865, as provided by the Treaty of Miramar (March 1864).

See alsoFrench Intervention (Mexico) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nancy N. Barker, "The Duke of Morny and the Affair of the Jecker Bonds," in French Historical Studies 6 (1970): 555-561, and The French Experience in Mexico, 1821–1861 (1979).

Additional Bibliography

Steven C. Topik, "When Mexico Had the Blues: A Transatlantic Tale of Bonds, Bankers, and Nationalists, 1862–1910" American Historical Review Vol. 105, No. 3 (June 2003): 714-738.

                                 Brian Hamnett