Rethinking Sovereign Debt from Colonial Empires to Hegemony

Abstract

This descriptive chapter identifies the available narratives on the evolution of sovereign debt across the four historical clusters we have chosen to examine and show how this volume updates and complements existing research. Consistent with the diplomatic framework outlined in the introduction, we survey patterns of similarities and differences between clusters in terms of risk analysis, legal clauses, bargaining power, and conceptions of state responsibility. Our periodization will not surprise the reader inasmuch it broadly conforms to the conventional reading that the Great Depression and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 were two critical junctures that deeply altered the form of creditor–debtor interactions in the sovereign sector. Yet, as we show below, this volume also makes substantial amendments to this conventional story. First, our focus on colonial history from the nineteenth-century building of empires to postcolonial transitions allows to diversify and identify discrepancies in the available narratives on each periods. Second, our attention to colonialism leads us to pay sustained attention to debt disputes arising during the postcolonial transitions of the 1960s–70s, a cluster of defaults which has not received sufficient scholarly attention. As explained below, our proposal to jointly analyse the historical threads of sovereign debt and colonialism allows for revisiting certain well-known cases of debt disputes and to examine previously unknown or little known events. The last section of this chapter presents the general organization of the volume as well as the list of selected case studies.

When it rains, it pours: Mexico's bank nationalisation and the debt crisis of 1982

“…For a literature review, seePanizza et al (2009).8 Cases of gunboat diplomacy were particularly relevant for the US as a creditor country during the early 20 th century. SeeMitchener and Weidenmier (2010) andPénet and Flores Zendejas (2021) for a different perspective.Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History…”

“… 8 Cases of gunboat diplomacy were particularly relevant for the US as a creditor country during the early 20 th century. See Mitchener and Weidenmier (2010) and Pénet and Flores Zendejas (2021) for a different perspective.…”