Juan José Rivas Moreno

Power Fellow, 2023/24

My primary research interests are on how capital markets emerge, and the relationship between institutions, trade, and financial structures. As a PhD student at the Department of Economic History at LSE, I completed a thesis on the capital markets of Manila and the financing of the trans-Pacific trade during the long eighteenth century, in a comparative exercise with the European East India companies. The thesis explored different ways of organising and supplying capital, where local citizens of Manila adapted religious institutions such as brotherhoods and pious endowments to finance long-distance trade between Asia and America. This research was financed by an ESRC-LSE doctoral training partnership, and a short-term fellowship at the Newberry Library of Chicago. During the fellowship I intend to explore the role that Manila played in the trade networks of the English East India Company, and to further investigate the historical implications of this alternative model of organising trade finance in the Early Modern world.