IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ereveh/v21y2017i2p236-257..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Colonialism or supersanctions: sovereignty and debt in West Africa, 1871–1914

Author

Listed:
  • Leigh Gardner

Abstract

West Africa has been neglected in literature on sovereign debt before 1914. However, it presented arguably the biggest test of investors’ willingness to overlook poor economic fundamentals due to colonial status. This paper presents data on bond yields for three British colonies and independent Liberia along with qualitative evidence on the mechanics of borrowing by West African governments. It suggests that a variety of imperial interventions were important in reducing borrowing costs for the poorer periphery of the empire. The contrasting case of Liberia shows that supersanctions did not fully replicate the effects of colonial rule.

Suggested Citation

  • Leigh Gardner, 2017. "Colonialism or supersanctions: sovereignty and debt in West Africa, 1871–1914," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 21(2), pages 236-257.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:21:y:2017:i:2:p:236-257.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/hex001
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carmen M. Reinhart & Christoph Trebesch, 2015. "The Pitfalls of External Dependence: Greece, 1829–2015," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 46(2 (Fall)), pages 307-328.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Albers, Thilo N.H. & Jerven, Morten & Suesse, Marvin, 2023. "The Fiscal State in Africa: Evidence from a Century of Growth," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 65-101, January.
    2. Abel Gwaindepi, 2019. "Serving God and Mammon: the ‘minerals-railway complex’ and its effects on colonial public finances in the British Cape Colony, 1810-1910," Working Papers 07/2019, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    3. Andreea-Alexandra Maerean & Maja Pedersen & Paul Sharp, 2021. "Sovereign Debt and Supersanctions in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Four Southeast European Countries, 1878-1913," Working Papers 0216, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    4. Abel Gwaindepi & Johan Fourie, 2020. "Public Sector Growth in the British Cape Colony: Evidence From New Data on Expenditure and Foreign Debt, 1830‐1910," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 88(3), pages 341-367, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthias Morys, 2016. "Financial supervision to fight fiscal dominance? The gold standard in Greece and South-East Europe between economic and political objectives and fiscal reality, 1841-1939," Discussion Papers 16/05, Department of Economics, University of York.
    2. George Alogoskoufis, 2024. "Before and After the Political Transition of 1974 Institutions, Politics, and the Economy of Post-War Greece," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 198, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    3. Matthias Morys, 2015. "Any lessons for today? Exchange-rate stabilisation in Greece and South-East Europe between economic and political objectives and fiscal reality, 1841-1939," Centre for Historical Economics and Related Research at York (CHERRY) Discussion Papers 15/01, CHERRY, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    4. Alogoskoufis, George, 2024. "Before and after the political transition of 1974: institutions, politics, and the economy of post-war Greece," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 124056, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Sergio Cesaratto, 2017. "Alternative interpretations of a stateless currency crisis," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 41(4), pages 977-998.
    6. Terzi, Alessio, 2020. "Macroeconomic adjustment in the euro area," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    7. Sergio Cesaratto, 2017. "The Nature of the Eurocrisis. A Reply to Febrero, Uxò and Bermejo," a/ Working Papers Series 1703, Italian Association for the Study of Economic Asymmetries, Rome (Italy).
    8. George Alogoskoufis, 2019. "Greece and the Euro: A Mundellian Tragedy," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 136, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    9. Hideaki Matsuoka, 2022. "Debt Intolerance: Threshold Level and Composition," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(4), pages 894-932, August.
    10. Mihalache, Gabriel, 2020. "Sovereign default resolution through maturity extension," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    11. Dumitriu, Ramona & Stefanescu, Răzvan, 2020. "Iluzii financiare, Partea întâi [Financial Illusions, Part 1]," MPRA Paper 101201, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 Jun 2020.
    12. Yu-Fu Chen & Michael Funke, 2017. "Greece’s Three-Act Tragedy: A Simple Model of Grexit vs. Staying Afloat inside the Single Currency Area," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 297-318, April.
    13. Matthias Morys, 2017. "La Grèce dans une union monétaire : les leçons à tirer de cent ans de régime de taux de change," Revue d'économie financière, Association d'économie financière, vol. 0(1), pages 255-260.
    14. Kollintzas, Tryphon & Papageorgiou, Dimitris & Vassilatos, Vanghelis, 2018. "Market and political power interactions in Greece: A theory," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 59-83.
    15. Eduardo Cavallo & Barry Eichengreen & Ugo Panizza, 2018. "Can countries rely on foreign saving for investment and economic development?," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 154(2), pages 277-306, May.
    16. Tryphon Kollintzas & Dimitris Papageorgiou & Efthymios Tsionas & Vanghelis Vassilatos, 2018. "Market and political power interactions in Greece: an empirical investigation," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-43, December.
    17. Cheliotis, Leonidas, 2022. "Depression and repression: global capitalism, economic crisis and penal politics in interwar Greece," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 111864, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Penet, Pierre, 2018. "Rethinking odious debt in the age of predatory lending: Old ideas for new problems," Working Papers unige:102988, University of Geneva, Paul Bairoch Institute of Economic History.
    19. Seunghoon Na & Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe & Martin Uribe & Vivian Z. Yue, 2015. "A model of the Twin Ds: optimal default and devaluation," FRB Atlanta CQER Working Paper 2015-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    20. Mitchener, Kris & Trebesch, Christoph, 2021. "Sovereign Debt in the 21st Century: Looking Backward, Looking Forward," CEPR Discussion Papers 15935, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:21:y:2017:i:2:p:236-257.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ereh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.