The financial crisis of 1891: an attempt to explain

Abstract

This study proposes examining the most important Portuguese financial crisis in the light of the so-called «Austrian monetary theory»: the question of the inflation of bank credit and the deepening of the crisis are, thus, examined with reference to the age of the gold standard from 1854 until it was abandoned in 1891, suggesting another reading of the evolution of nineteenth century Portuguese «capitalism» and its conditioning by the state.