Financial missionaries to the world : the politics and culture of dollar diplomacy, 1900-1930 / Emily S. Rosenberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenberg, Emily S., 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International economic relations.

United States--Foreign economic relations--20th century.

United States.

United States--Economic policy--To 1933.

Economic policy.

International finance--History--20th century.

International finance.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 334 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1999.

Summary:

Recently, a volatile global economy has challenged the United States to rethink its financial policies toward economically troubled countries. Emily S. Rosenberg suggests that perplexing questions about how to standardize practices within the global financial system, and thereby strengthen market economies in unstable areas of the world, go back to the early decades of this century. Then, dollar diplomacy -- the practice of extending private U.S. bank loans in exchange for financial supervision over other nations -- provided America's major approach to stabilizing economies overseas and expanding its influence.

Policymakers, private bankers, and the members of the emerging profession of international economic advising cooperated in devising arrangements by which U.S. banks would extend foreign loans on the condition that the countries hire U.S. experts to revamp financial systems and exercise some supervision. Rosenberg demonstrates that these arrangements were not simply technical and shows how they became central to foreign policy debates during the 1920s, when increasingly vocal critics at home and abroad assailed dollar diplomacy as a new imperialism. She explores how loan-for-supervision arrangements interrelated with broad cultural notions of racial destiny, professional expertise, and the virtues of manliness. An innovative, interdisciplinary study, Financial Missionaries to the World illuminates the dilemmas of public/private cooperation in foreign economic policy and the incalculable consequences of exercising financial power in the global marketplace.

Contents:

1 Gold-Standard Visions: International Currency Reformers, 1898-1905 4

The Meanings of Money and Markets 5

Turning Silver Standards into Gold 12

The Commission on International Exchange 18

The New Specialists in International Financial Advising 23

2 The Roosevelt Corollary and the Dominican Model of 1905 31

Gender, Race, National Interest, and Civilization 31

The Dominican Model 41

Development of Investment Banking 47

International Precedents for Fiscal Control 52

Fiscal Control through Public-Private Partnership 56

3 The Changing Forms of Controlled Loans under Taft and Wilson 61

Extending the Dominican Model 62

Control by Private Contract 71

Opposition to Taft's Dollar Diplomacy 77

Tightening Dollar Diplomacy under Wilson 79

Public-Private Interactions and Consenting Parties 93

4 Private Money, Public Policy, 1921-1923 97

The Postwar Political Economy and Loan Policy 97

Postwar Controlled Loans in the Western Hemisphere 108

5 Opposition to Financial Imperialism, 1919-1926 122

The Postwar Anti-imperialist Impulse 124

"Is America Imperialistic?" Conflicting Cultural Narratives 131

Anti-imperialist Insurgency after 1924 137

The U.S. Government Backs Away 147

6 Stabilization Programs and Financial Missions in New Guises, 1924-1928 151

Approaches to Stabilization 151

The Kemmerer Missions in South America 155

European Stabilization and the Dawes Plan 166

Poland: A Kemmerer Mission in Europe 176

Persia: The Millspaugh Mission 183

7 Faith in Professionalism, Fascination with Primitivism 187

Professionalization and Financial Markets 187

Mass Culture and Primitivism 198

8 Dollar Diplomacy in Decline, 1927-1930 219

The Questionable Impact of Supervisory Missions 220

Opposition to U.S. Supervision 230

Deterioration of the Bond Market and the End of Foreign Lending 240

Public Policy and the End of an Era 247

Looking Backward and Forward 253.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-325) and index.

ISBN:

0674000595

OCLC:

41039850