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When we think on the economy of the American viceroyalties, we consider immediately the extraction of natural resources and the creation of new enterprises or industries in the New World. Few scholars, except persons like María del Pilar Martínez López-Cano, have taken the responsibility of studying how credit was the tool that made possible very important enterprises as the even the Conquest of the America.

This book approaches the different mechanisms, monetary operations and political strategies employed by the sectors of the viceregal society (secular or religious) to develop commercial initiatives. The detailed review of notarial documents of the sixteenth century creates a model for those interested in studying later centuries.