The Spoilers Foiled: The Exclusion of Prussian Finance from the French Liberation Loan of 1871

D. S. Landes

Chapter 4 in Economics in the Long View, 1982, pp 67-110 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract If we are to believe Bismarck, it was the representatives of defeated France who first offered the Germans a money indemnity in the hope of saving territory. To this, his first reaction was one of scorn. ‘We don’t need money’, he proclaimed to one unofficial peacemaker. ‘I pray of you to say, when you go back, that we are neither children nor fools’.1 That was in mid-September 1870, two weeks after the Battle of Sedan. Shortly thereafter the bankers of Prussia were negotiating with one another the modalities of what had come to be known as the Kriegs-Kontribution, and Prussian claims on French territory had grown with the contemplation. In the end, the French paid lots of money, more than they thought anyone could ask; and they gave up considerable territory, again more than they ever thought their enemies could ask them.

Keywords: Issue Price; French Government; German Syndicate; Paper Money; Budget Committee (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1982
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-06290-4_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349062904

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-06290-4_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().