Jewish banking & Mexican independence. An early nineteenth-century indenture authorising the liquidation and winding-up of the Jewish merchant bank B.A. Goldschmidt & Co. The firm entered into administration on 15th February 1826 shortly before the death of its patriarch Lion Abraham Goldschmidt on the 18th of the month.

A fascinating record of international finance at the turn of the century. The deed is signed and sealed by over 200 individuals representing firms across the continent, with a list of creditors including the prominent Jewish bankers Moses Isaac Hertz (1778-1848), Salomon Heine (1767-1844) and Beér Lion Fould (1767-1855). The bank's surviving partners are named as Adolphus Goldschmidt (1798-1876), Achilles Fould (1800-1867), and Charles William Stokes. Both Goldschmidt, son of Lion Abraham, and Achilles would go on to later fame. The former as a member of the first Legislative Council in the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, and Achilles Fould for first following in his father's footsteps (the creditor Beér) at the family's Paris bank, and later for serving as the Minister of Finance for France on four occasions under Napoleon III.

The exact nature of B.A. Goldschmidt's collapse is not made explicit within the document. However, a clue is contained within the terms of the liquidation agreement, which allots a generous monthly allowance of £90 to Goldschmidt and £40 to each of the other partners with the cryptic instruction to 'proceed to the United States of America and to Mexico for the purpose of collecting the assets and arranging and settling the affairs of the said late firm in those parts and more particularly as regards its affairs and transactions with the Government of Mexico and on mature reflection upon the peculiar and difficult nature of the affairs and transactions of the said late firm'.

At the time the order was made Mexico was in a state of great political flux. The former Spanish colony had declared its independence in 1821 following a series of hard fought conflicts, and formed a constitutional monarchy under Agustín de Iturbide (1783-1824) as the First Mexican Empire. An unstable regime, in 1823 Iturbide was ousted from power and a Republic declared. The young nation had been bankrupted by war, and by an imperial household whose monthly expenditure amounted to nearly five times the cost of maintaining the former Spanish viceroy. Meanwhile no European state would recognise Iturbide's reign and most cut-off economic ties with the infant country. In 1824 the provisional government elected the general Guadalupe Victoria (1786-1843) President of the United Mexican States, but it too struggled with finances and collapsed within a decade.

Manuscript on vellum, 7 folding sheets (57 x 67 cm); with signatures and seals of over 200 creditors, MS short-title and date to verso; weakness along fold lines of outer sheet, areas of discolouration, corner folds.