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A World of Debt. A political history of public debt in Europe and the US from the 19th century to the present

Initially triggered by excessive private debt, the 2008 economic and financial crisis brought the issue of public debt to the forefront of political debate in Europe and the US. Most governments had to intervene massively to avoid the collapse of their banking and financial systems and to mitigate the social consequences of the crisis. The result has been an unprecedented peacetime level of public debt, fuelling intellectual debates, political tensions, and social movements in countries either unable to honour their debts or forced to adopt austerity measures to avoid being sanctioned or reprimanded by the rating agencies, markets, or European institutions. In the space of a few years, sovereign debt has become a key indicator in economic and political debate and a source of permanent conflict at international, European, and national level.

Despite the centrality of these issues, contemporary political history has so far shown little interest in the subject. This research project aims to fill this gap by collectively writing a political and global history of public debt in the democratic era, centred on Europe and the US while remaining attentive to these region’s interactions with other parts of the world (China, India, colonial Africa, South America, etc.), to which they exported their capital in the 19th and 20th centuries. The project involves an international group of some twenty researchers led by the Sciences Po Centre for History and the Centre for North American Studies (EHESS). The inquiry covers four main areas of research: political debt regimes, financial mobilisation in the age of total wars, relations between the state, the market, and citizens over the long term, and the international politics of public debt.

The project is structured by an annual seminar and three international conferences, and will culminate in June 2020 with the publication of an edited volume, co-edited by Nicolas Barreyre and Nicolas Delalande, provisionally entitled A World of Public Debts. A Political History (Palgrave MacMillan, under agreement).

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