Rethinking the causes and consequences of Britain’s default on its First World War debts to the United States of America The Long Shadow of Default focuses on an important but neglected example of sovereign default between two of the wealthiest and most powerful democracies in modern history. The United Kingdom accrued considerable financial debts to the United States during and immediately after the First World War. In 1934, the British government unilaterally suspended payment on these debts. This book examines why the United Kingdom was one of the last major powers to default on its war debts to the United States and how these outstanding obligations affected political and economic relations between both governments. The British government’s unpaid debts cast a surprisingly long shadow over policymaking on both sides of the Atlantic. Memories of British default would limit transatlantic cooperation before and after the Second World War, inform Congressional debates about the economic difficulties of the 1970s, and generate legal challenges for both governments up until the 1990s. More than a century later, the United Kingdom’s war debts to the United States remain unpaid and outstanding. David James Gill provides one of the most detailed historical analyses of any sovereign default. He brings attention to an often-neglected episode in international history to inform, refine, and sometimes challenge the wider study of sovereign default.
A volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology West Baltimore stands out in the popular imagination as the quintessential “inner city”—gritty, run-down, and marred by drugs and gang violence. Indeed, with the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, the area experienced a rapid onset of poverty and high unemployment, with few public resources available to alleviate economic distress. But in stark contrast to the image of a perpetual “urban underclass” depicted in television by shows like The Wire, sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson present a more nuanced portrait of Baltimore’s inner city residents that employs important new research on the significance of early-life opportunities available to low-income populations. The Long Shadow focuses on children who grew up in west Baltimore neighborhoods and others like them throughout the city, tracing how their early lives in the inner city have affected their long-term well-being. Although research for this book was conducted in Baltimore, that city’s struggles with deindustrialization, white flight, and concentrated poverty were characteristic of most East Coast and Midwest manufacturing cities. The experience of Baltimore’s children who came of age during this era is mirrored in the experiences of urban children across the nation. For 25 years, the authors of The Long Shadow tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children through the Beginning School Study Youth Panel (BSSYP). The study monitored the children’s transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults. The authors’ fine-grained analysis confirms that the children who lived in more cohesive neighborhoods, had stronger families, and attended better schools tended to maintain a higher economic status later in life. As young adults, they held higher-income jobs and had achieved more personal milestones (such as marriage) than their lower-status counterparts. Differences in race and gender further stratified life opportunities for the Baltimore children. As one of the first studies to closely examine the outcomes of inner-city whites in addition to African Americans, data from the BSSYP shows that by adulthood, white men of lower status family background, despite attaining less education on average, were more likely to be employed than any other group in part due to family connections and long-standing racial biases in Baltimore’s industrial economy. Gender imbalances were also evident: the women, who were more likely to be working in low-wage service and clerical jobs, earned less than men. African American women were doubly disadvantaged insofar as they were less likely to be in a stable relationship than white women, and therefore less likely to benefit from a second income. Combining original interviews with Baltimore families, teachers, and other community members with the empirical data gathered from the authors’ groundbreaking research, The Long Shadow unravels the complex connections between socioeconomic origins and socioeconomic destinations to reveal a startling and much-needed examination of who succeeds and why.
Rethinking the causes and consequences of Britain's default on its First World War debts to the United States of America The Long Shadow of Default focuses on an important but neglected example of sovereign default between two of the wealthiest and most powerful democracies in modern history. The United Kingdom accrued considerable financial debts to the United States during and immediately after the First World War. In 1934, the British government unilaterally suspended payment on these debts. This book examines why the United Kingdom was one of the last major powers to default on its war debts to the United States and how these outstanding obligations affected political and economic relations between both governments. The British government's unpaid debts cast a surprisingly long shadow over policymaking on both sides of the Atlantic. Memories of British default would limit transatlantic cooperation before and after the Second World War, inform Congressional debates about the economic difficulties of the 1970s, and generate legal challenges for both governments up until the 1990s. More than a century later, the United Kingdom's war debts to the United States remain unpaid and outstanding. David James Gill provides one of the most detailed historical analyses of any sovereign default. He brings attention to an often-neglected episode in international history to inform, refine, and sometimes challenge the wider study of sovereign default.
‘A century ago we got it wrong. We sent thousands of young Australians on a military operation that was barely more than a disaster. It’s right that a hundred years later we should feel strongly about that. But have we got our remembrance right? What lessons haven’t we learned about war, and what might be the cost of our Anzac obsession?’ Defence analyst and former army officer James Brown believes that Australia is expending too much time, money and emotion on the Anzac legend, and that today’s soldiers are suffering for it. Vividly evoking the war in Afghanistan, Brown reveals the experience of the modern soldier. He looks closely at the companies and clubs that trade on the Anzac story. He shows that Australians spend a lot more time looking after dead warriors than those who are alive. We focus on a cult of remembrance, instead of understanding a new world of soldiering and strategy. And we make it impossible to criticise the Australian Defence Force, even when it makes the same mistakes over and over. None of this is good for our soldiers or our ability to deal with a changing world. With respect and passion, Brown shines a new light on Anzac’s long shadow and calls for change. "Bold, original, challenging - James Brown tackles the burgenoning Anzac industry and asks Australians to re-examine how we think about the military and modern-day service." - Leigh Sales "The best book yet written, not just on Australia's Afghan war, but on war itself and the creator/destroyer myth of Anzac." - John Birmingham James Brown is a former Australian Army officer, who commanded a cavalry troop in Southern Iraq, served on the Australian taskforce headquarters in Baghdad, and was attached to Special Forces in Afghanistan. Today he is the Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy where he works on strategic military issues and defence policy. He also chairs the NSW Government’s Contemporary Veterans Forum. He lives in Sydney.
The Long Shadows is the first book to offer global perspectives on the environmental history of World War II. Based on long-term research, the selected essays represent the best available studies in different fields and countries. With contributions touching on Europe, America, Asia, and Africa, the book has a truly global approach. The Long Shadows considers the profound and lasting impact World War II has had on global environments, encompassing polar, temperate, and tropical ecological zones. The first section of the book offers an introduction to and holistic overview of the war. The second section examines the social and environmental impacts of the conflict, while the third focuses on the history and legacy of resource extraction. A final section offers conclusions and hypotheses. Numerous themes and topics are explored in these previously unpublished essays, including the control of typhus fever, the environmental policies of the Third Reich, Japanese imperialism and marine resources, and the new and innovative field of acoustic ecology. Aimed at researchers and students in the fields of environmental history, military history, and global history, The Long Shadows will also appeal to general readers interested in the environmental impact of the greatest military conflict in the history of the world. Book jacket.
Why have the early years of the 21st century seen increasing use of emergency-type powers or claims of supra-legal executive authority, particularly by the Western countries regarded as the world's leading democracies, notably the United States? This book examines the extraordinary range of executive and prerogative powers, emergency legislation, martial law provisos and indemnities in countries with English-derived legal systems, primarily the UK, the US and Australia. The author challenges attempts by legal and academic theorists to relativise, rationalise, legitimise or propose supposedly safe limits for the use of emergency powers, especially since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. This volume also considers why the reputation of Carl Schmitt, the best-known champion of 'exceptional' dictatorial powers during the post-1919 Weimer Republic in Germany, and who later enthusiastically served and sanctified the Nazi dictatorship, is being rehabilitated, and examines why his totalitarian doctrines are thought to be of relevance to modern society. This diverse book will be of importance to politicians, the media, the legal profession, as well as academics and students of law, humanities and politics.
At an event honoring Daisy Bates as 1990’s Distinguished Citizen then-governor Bill Clinton called her "the most distinguished Arkansas citizen of all time." Her classic account of the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, couldn't be found on most bookstore shelves in 1962 and was banned throughout the South. In 1988, after the University of Arkansas Press reprinted it, it won an American Book Award. On September 3, 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to surround all-white Central High School and prevent the entry of nine black students, challenging the Supreme Court's 1954 order to integrate all public schools. On September 25, Daisy Bates, an official of the NAACP in Arkansas, led the nine children into the school with the help of federal troops sent by President Eisenhower–the first time in eighty-one years that a president had dispatched troops to the South to protect the constitutional rights of black Americans. This new edition of Bates's own story about these historic events is being issued to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Little Rock School crisis in 2007.
We track direct public interventions and public holdings in 1,114 financial institutions over the period 2007–17 in 37 countries based on publicly available information. We use aggregate official data to validate this new dataset and estimate the fiscal impact of interventions, including the value of asset holdings remaining in state hands at end-2017. Direct public support to financial institutions amounted to $1.6 trillion ($3.5 trillion including guarantees), with larger amounts allocated to lower capitalized and less profitable banks. As of end-2017, only a few countries had fully divested the initial support they provided during the crisis. Public holdings were divested faster in better capitalized, more profitable, and more liquid banks, and in countries where the economy recovered faster. In countries where the government stake remained high relative to the initial intervention, private investment and credit growth were slower, financial access, depth, efficiency, and competition were worse, and financial stability improved less.
Foreign Affairs Best Books of the Year (2023) An epic history of the people and institutions that have built the global economy since the Great Depression. In this vivid landmark history, the distinguished economic historian Martin Daunton pulls back the curtain on the institutions and individuals who have created and managed the global economy over the last ninety years, revealing how and why one economic order breaks down and another is built. During the Great Depression, trade and currency warfare led to the rise of economic nationalism—a retreat from globalization that culminated in war. From World War II came a new, liberal economic order. Squarely reflecting the interests of the West in the Cold War, liberalism faced collapse in the 1970s and was succeeded by neoliberalism, financialization, and hyper-globalization. Now, as leading nations are tackling the fallout from Covid-19 and threats of inflation, food insecurity, and climate change, Daunton calls for a return to a more just and equitable form of globalization. Western imperial powers have overwhelmingly determined the structures of world economic government, often advancing their own self-interests and leading to ruinous resource extraction, debt, poverty, and political and social instability in the Global South. He argues that while our current economic system is built upon the politics of and between the world’s biggest economies, a future of global recovery—and the reduction of economic inequality—requires the development of multilateral institutions. Dramatic and revelatory, The Economic Government of the World offers a powerful analysis of the origins of our current global crises and a path toward a fairer international order.
