Banco Herediano 1879-1884: historia de las operaciones del primer banco provincial en Costa Rica

Abstract

The paper analyzes Banco Herediano’s short operational life during the last quarter of the 19th century. It describes how the first provincial bank in Costa Rica took advantage of a period during which coffee prices boomed to develop an important regional credit activity. It presents a brief reference to the then existing economic and banking contexts to show how changes in these initially created conditions favorable to establishing the bank. However, later, when changes in the world market led to a fall in coffee price, this situation ultimately resulted in the bank closing its business. Based on bank documents and national archival sources, we reconstructed the bank’s structure and operations for 1879-1884. A summary of results includes details about financing operations, causes of changes in board membership, characteristics of 2 600 individual loans and 760 debtors, the type of guarantees utilized, and a brief comparison of performance in relation to contemporary banks in Costa Rica.