Drawing on the archives of London banks and the papers of statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic, this text explores the United States' foreign debt during the mid-19th century, a crucial but previously neglected aspect of the Civil War period.

Ultimate defeat of the Confederacy.

The United States was a debtor nation in the mid-nineteenth century, with half of its national debt held overseas. Lacking the resources to develop the nation and to fund the wars necessary to expand and then preserve it, the United States looked across the Atlantic for investment capital. The need to obtain foreign capital greatly influenced American foreign policy, principally relations with Britain. The intersection of finance and diplomacy was particularly evident during the Civil War when both the North and South integrated attempts to procure loans from European banks into their larger international strategies. Furthermore, the financial needs of the United States (and the Confederacy) imparted significant political power to an elite group of London-based financiers who became intimately involved in American foreign relations during this period. This study explores and assesses how the United State's need for capital influenced its foreign relations in the tumultuous years wedged between the two great financial crises of the nineteenth century, 1837 to 1873. Drawing on the unused archives of London banks and the papers of statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic, this work illuminates our understanding of mid-nineteenth-century American foreign relations by highlighting how financial considerations influenced the formation of foreign policy and functioned as a peace factor in Anglo-American relations. This study also analyses a crucial, but ignored, dimension of the Civil War - the efforts of both the North and the South to attract the support of European financiers. Though foreign contributions to each side failed to match the hopes of Union and Confederate leaders, the financial diplomacy of the Civil War shaped the larger foreign policy strategies of both sides and contributed to both the preservation of British neutrality and the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy.

This volume throws important new light upon a pivotal period of transition in the Anglo-American relationship and sets the stage for its equally dramatic transformation during and after the Second World War. Based upon extensive research in previously unpublished archival material on both sides of the Atlantic, for the first time this book offers a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the war debt problem from its origins at the end of the First World War until its final removal with the launch of Roosevelt's Lend-Lease programme in 1940-41. This work will be of great interest to diplomats and journalists, as well as to students and scholars of political, diplomatic, economic and international history.

Combines the financial and diplomatic history of Mexico to present a treatise on the financial status of a debtor country and a political history of diplomatic negotiations between Mexico and her creditors.

How does cooperation emerge in a condition of international anarchy? Michael Tomz sheds new light on this fundamental question through a study of international debt across three centuries. Tomz develops a reputational theory of cooperation between sovereign governments and foreign investors. He explains how governments acquire reputations in the eyes of investors, and argues that concerns about reputation sustain international lending and repayment. Tomz's theory generates novel predictions about the dynamics of cooperation: how investors treat first-time borrowers, how access to credit evolves as debtors become more seasoned, and how countries ascend and descend the reputational ladder by acting contrary to investors' expectations. Tomz systematically tests his theory and the leading alternatives across three centuries of financial history. His remarkable data, gathered from archives in nine countries, cover all sovereign borrowers. He deftly combines statistical methods, case studies, and content analysis to scrutinize theories from as many angles as possible. Tomz finds strong support for his reputational theory while challenging prevailing views about sovereign debt. His pathbreaking study shows that, across the centuries, reputations have guided lending and repayment in consistent ways. Moreover, Tomz uncovers surprisingly little evidence of punitive enforcement strategies. Creditors have not compelled borrowers to repay by threatening military retaliation, imposing trade sanctions, or colluding to deprive defaulters of future loans. He concludes by highlighting the implications of his reputational logic for areas beyond sovereign debt, further advancing our understanding of the puzzle of cooperation under anarchy.

A World Safe for Capitalism unravels a little-known incident: a Wall Street corporation's takeover of the foreign debt, national railroad, and national bank of the Dominican Republic in the 1890s. Working with the republic's tyrannical president, the American firm tried to turn self-sufficient peasants into cash-crop farmers, with disastrous results. By 1904, the company's narrow pursuit of profit clashed with Theodore Roosevelt's goal of making the United States a great power, thus triggering a sweeping new policy-the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Praised by Diplomatic History as "a model of globe-trotting multiarchival research," this exciting history covers events in New York, Washington, Santo Domingo, Brussels, and London.