Brevity can frequently be a virtue, but in some instances it may become a vice. On the one hand, Harwich Vallenilla’s brief study provides a useful overview of Venezuelan banking from the 1820s to 1940. He reviews the principal banking initiatives on the basis of secondary literature, which is somewhat more extensive than might be expected. On the other hand, for the serious student of Latin American financial history, the drawbacks of such conciseness are evident. His essay does not provide an in-depth study of any of the banking institutions, nor does it explain satisfactorily the banks’ role in financing agricultural and later oil exports, in providing short- and medium-term government credit, or in stimulating urban development. Harwich Vallenilla cites no annual bank reports, and the paucity of financial statistics is somewhat surprising.
The book has four sections. The first covers the early nineteenth century, and reviews the two first important banks, the Banco Colonial Británico (est. 1838) and the Banco Nacional de Venezuela (est. 1841), both of which failed with the 1843 panic. The second covers the turbulent years at midcentury, when the government of José Antonio Paez indulged in banking experiments with the guileless object of obtaining funds for politicians and generals. In the third section, Harwich Vallenilla covers what could have been a most interesting subject, the origins of a national system of banking under the dictatorship of General Antonio Guzmán Blanco (1870-88). In particular, it would have been useful to know exactly what the functional relationship was between the banks and the leading coffee, cacao, and hide export firms. In this respect, Susan Berglund’s recent research on the Boulton firm of Caracas is more revealing, clarifying the role of these enterprises in the development of Venezuelan agrarian-based capitalism.
The final section is aimed at an even more significant question: the relationship between the development of petroleum and the new banking system in the 1920s and 30s. The main features of the competition between foreign-owned and national banks are underlined as well as the effects of the crisis of the 1930s, which led to the consolidation of the national banks. Nonetheless, the author pays only superficial attention to the analysis of the crucial petroleum sector and its links to the banks. The reader’s curiosity is whetted, but remains unsatisfied.
