Abstract
The work below shows the importance of the French archives to study the banking and financial history of the Caribbean and Central America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These files may be classified into public and private archives, and the article evaluates the amplitude of the resources that have survived relating to the major problems that the economies of these regions faced during this period. The archives are particularly useful in relation to borrowing countries that placed loans on the international market through French merchant banks, known during these years as “banques d’affaires’. Also the archives deal with the creation of railways and agricultural and mining companies. Finally, the article explains the numbering system ordering the “boxes” containing these documents. From the archives we see, on the one hand, the strong rivalry that existed among these banks, and on the other hand, the positions of the Quai d’Orsay and the Ministry of Finance in respect to their activities. Reproduced in Appendix are some of the most interesting documents for the banking history of these two regions.