A World of Public Debts

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xliv

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2. Part I

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-3

      PDF

   2. An Empire of Debts? Spain and Its Colonial Realm

      • Regina Grafe

      Pages 5-35

   3. Publicity, Debt, and Politics: The Old Regime and the French Revolution

      • Rebecca L. Spang

      Pages 37-55

   4. Politics of Credit: Government Borrowing and Political Regimes in Sweden

      • Patrik Winton

      Pages 57-78

   5. Public Debt and Democratic Statecraft in Nineteenth-Century France

      • David Todd, Alexia Yates

      Pages 79-106

3. Part II

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-109

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   2. The Entanglements of Domestic Polities: Public Debt and European Interventions in Latin America

      • Juan H. Flores Zendejas

      Pages 111-133

   3. Leveraging Foreign Control: Reform in the Ottoman Empire

      • Ali Coşkun Tunçer

      Pages 135-154

   4. The Unforeseen Path of Debt Imperialism: Local Struggles, Transnational Knowledge, and Colonialism in Egypt

      • Malak Labib

      Pages 155-174

   5. Trading Sovereignty for Capital? Public Debt in West Africa, 1871–1914

      • Leigh Gardner

      Pages 175-199

   6. The Domestic Effects of Foreign Capital: Public Debt and Regional Inequalities in Late Qing China

      • Dong Yan

      Pages 201-230

   7. Fiscal Federalism: Local Debt and the Construction of the Modern State in the United States and France

      • Noam Maggor, Stephen W. Sawyer

      Pages 231-258

4. Part III

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 259-260

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   2. The Financial Challenges of Total War: Britain, France, and Their Empires in the First World War

      • Nicolas Delalande

      Pages 261-286

   3. Beyond Democracy or Dictatorship: Structuring Sovereign Debt in Germany from Weimar to the Postwar Period

      • Stefanie Middendorf

      Pages 287-315

   4. The Communist World of Public Debt (1917–1991): The Failure of a Countermodel?

      • Étienne Forestier-Peyrat, Kristy Ironside

      Pages 317-345

   5. Debt Without Taxation: Iraq, Syria, and the Crisis of Empires from the Mandates to the Cold War Era

      • Matthieu Rey

      Pages 347-369

5. Part IV

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 371-372

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   2. From Debt Dirigisme to Debt Markets in France and India

      • Anush Kapadia, Benjamin Lemoine

      Pages 373-403

This book analyzes public debt from a political, historical, and global perspective. It demonstrates that public debt has been a defining feature in the construction of modern states, a main driver in the history of capitalism, and a potent geopolitical force. From revolutionary crisis to empire and the rise and fall of a post-war world order, the problem of debt has never been the sole purview of closed economic circles. This book offers a key to understanding the centrality of public debt today by revealing that political problems of public debt have and will continue to need a political response.  

Today’s tendency to consider public debt as a source of fragility or economic inefficiency misses the fact that, since the eighteenth century, public debts and capital markets have on many occasions been used by states to enforce their sovereignty and build their institutions, especially in times of war. It is nonetheless striking to observe that certain solutions that were used in the past to smooth out public debt crises (inflation, default, cancellation, or capital controls) were left out of the political framing of the recent crisis, therefore revealing how the balance of power between bondholders, taxpayers, pensioners, and wage-earners has evolved over the past 40 years.  

Today, as the Covid-19 pandemic opens up a dramatic new crisis, reconnecting the history of capitalism and that of democracy seems one of the most urgent intellectual and political tasks of our time. This global political history of public debt is a contribution to this debate and will be of interest to financial, economic, and political historians and researchers.   

Chapters 13 and 19 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

• public debt
• history of capitalism
• political history
• the global impact of public debt
• economic collapse
• financial crisis
• sovereign debt funds
• debt crisis
• sovereignty
• inflation
• capitalism

   “A World of Public Debts is a fascinating and illuminating book. Barreyre and Delalande have put together 25 leading scholars on the history of public debt, from colonial empires to the present day. By doing so they have produced what will become a major reference book on the topic. In my view, this book sets the standards for what future historical research should look like: a fine mixture of political, ideological and socioeconomic history. Historians and other social scientists should not leave economic and financial issues and their technicalities to economists. Quite the contrary: they should confront them and demonstrate that they cannot be properly addressed without putting at the center of the analysis the issues of political legitimacy, knowledge and power. A must-read.” (Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Capital and Ideology)“The essays in this volume reveal how public debt goes to the core of the entangled relationship between government and money. Spanning a wide range of countries over an extended period, the authors pose basic questions about the meaning of sovereignty, the co-dependence of private finance and public power, and the balance between taxpayers and creditors.  This is a stunning collection.” (Jeremy Adelman, author of Republic of Capital and Worlds Together, Worlds Apart)

“Public debt is one of the largest dramas of our times. A World of Public Debts is a brilliant work of historical scholarship that explores the multiplicity of experiences of debt across space and time, raising profound and important questions about the ever-changing relationship between the market and the state.” (Emma Rothschild, author of Economic Sentiments and The Inner Life of Empires)

• Mondes Américains/CENA, EHESS, Paris, France

  Nicolas Barreyre

• Centre d’Histoire, Sciences Po, Paris, France

  Nicolas Delalande

Nicolas Barreyre is Associate Professor of American History at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris.

Nicolas Delalande is Associate Professor of European History at Sciences Po, Paris.   

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