Séminaire ouvert d’histoire économique / Ανοιχτό σεμινάριο οικονομικής ιστορίας
Political economy of default and international financial control in Greece, 1893-1913
Coşkun Tunçer University College London
Salle des conférences de l’EFA / Αίθουσα διαλέξεων της EFA
The period from the 1870s to 1914 was the peak of the nineteenth-century financial globalisation. Throughout the period, the rapid increase in capital flows in the form of sovereign debt was punctuated by defaults on foreign obligations in many debtor countries including Greece in 1893. Foreign creditors’ response to these defaults varied from case to case and evolved as the century progressed. Measures included seizing the assets of a debtor country through military intervention, trade restrictions, preventing access to future credit and putting debtor nations under “international financial control” (IFC) by introducing foreign administrators as in the case of Greece in 1898. Besides Greece, IFC was introduced in a number of heavily indebted countries in the European periphery, and the ability of foreign controllers to reinstate creditworthiness of these debtor countries was not uniform.
In the first part of this talk, I aim to put the 1893 Greek default and the subsequent international financial control into global context by comparing it to other cases of default and foreign controls in the European periphery. This will be largely based on my past research published with the title of Sovereign Debt and International Financial Control: The Middle East and the Balkans, 1870–1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). In the second half of my talk, I will give an overview of my current research project that explores the relationship between creditworthiness and political regime type in the peripheries in the late nineteenth century. More specifically, I will aim to map the political cleavages within the Greek parliament before 1913 and show how the effectiveness of foreign controls was conditioned by domestic political institutions.
In the first part of this talk, I aim to put the 1893 Greek default and the subsequent international financial control into global context by comparing it to other cases of default and foreign controls in the European periphery. This will be largely based on my past research published with the title of Sovereign Debt and International Financial Control: The Middle East and the Balkans, 1870–1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). In the second half of my talk, I will give an overview of my current research project that explores the relationship between creditworthiness and political regime type in the peripheries in the late nineteenth century. More specifically, I will aim to map the political cleavages within the Greek parliament before 1913 and show how the effectiveness of foreign controls was conditioned by domestic political institutions.
CONTACTSSophia Zoumboulaki
Assistante administrative pour la Direction des Études
sophia.zoumboulaki@efa.gr
+ 30 210 36 79 904
Assistante administrative pour la Direction des Études
sophia.zoumboulaki@efa.gr
+ 30 210 36 79 904
Nolwenn Grémillet
Communication
nolwenn.gremillet@efa.gr
+ 30 210 36 79 943