Pierre Pénet, Juan Flores Zendejas (eds), Sovereign Debt Diplomacies : Rethinking sovereign debt from colonial empires to hegemony, Oxford University Press, 2021, 384 p.

Presentation

Sovereign Debt Diplomacies aims to revisit the meaning of sovereign debt in relation to colonial history and postcolonial developments.

The volume historicises a research field that has so far focused primarily on the post-1980 years. A focus on colonial debt from the 19th century building of colonial empires to the decolonisation era in the 1960s-70s fills an important gap in recent debt historiographies.

Antother contribution adds a 'law and society' dimension to studies of debt. The analytical payoff of the exercise is to capture the current developments and functional limits of debt contracting and adjudication in relation to the long-term political and sociological dynamics of sovereignty. Finally, Sovereign Debt Diplomacies imports insights from, and contributes to the body of research currently developed in the Humanities under the label 'colonial and postcolonial studies'.

More info (see editor's website)