Rethinking sovereign debt from colonial empires to hegemony

Abstract

This volume offers two important contributions to the literature on sovereign debt. First, it provides a unique genealogy of debt collection practices in terms of their availability, acceptability and efficacy. We argue that creditors’ tactics and methods to enforce debt repayment emerged and solidified to a large extent in relation to the threads of colonial history, from the building of empires to the decolonisation era. Second, this volume reflects critically on the relevance of neo-colonial interpretations in recent cases of sovereign debt disputes.

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