The Unforeseen Path of Debt Imperialism: Local Struggles, Transnational Knowledge, and Colonialism in Egypt

Malak Labib
Additional contact information
Malak Labib: Free University of Berlin/Forum Transregionale Studien

Chapter Chapter 7 in A World of Public Debts, 2020, pp 155-174 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In 1876, Egypt defaulted on its foreign debt, opening the way to European powers’ involvement in the country’s finances, which ultimately culminated in the British occupation of 1882. While the case of Egypt has been analyzed as a classic case of international financial control, this chapter revisits this trajectory by focusing on the role of experts and expertise. It shows how European experts and creditors sought to develop specific statistical and accounting instruments to manage public debt. Yet, rather than analyzing this process as a transfer of expert knowledge from Europe to the “periphery,” the chapter shows how technical debates intersected with political struggles, involving multiple actors. Furthermore, this chapter pays attention to transnational flows of expertise that shaped Egypt’s debt liquidation and it analyzes, in turn, how the Egyptian experiment informed later cases of international financial control (IFC).

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

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:psitcp:978-3-030-48794-2_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783030487942

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-48794-2_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().