Bankers and Empire - Books.Infosec.Exchange

Paperback, 368 pages

Published by University of Chicago Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-226-59811-6

"From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. The precursors to institutions like Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, as well as a host of long-gone and lesser-known financial entities, sought to push out their European rivals so that they could control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they not only trampled local sovereignty, grappled with domestic banking regulation, and backed US imperialism but they set the model for bad behavior by banks, visible still today. In Bankers and Empire, Peter James Hudson tells the provocative story of this period, taking a close look at both the institutions and individuals who defined this era of American capitalism in the West Indies. Whether in Wall Street minstrel shows or in dubious practices across the Caribbean, the …

"From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. The precursors to institutions like Citibank and JPMorgan Chase, as well as a host of long-gone and lesser-known financial entities, sought to push out their European rivals so that they could control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they not only trampled local sovereignty, grappled with domestic banking regulation, and backed US imperialism but they set the model for bad behavior by banks, visible still today. In Bankers and Empire, Peter James Hudson tells the provocative story of this period, taking a close look at both the institutions and individuals who defined this era of American capitalism in the West Indies. Whether in Wall Street minstrel shows or in dubious practices across the Caribbean, the behavior of the banks was deeply conditioned by bankers racial views and prejudices. Drawing deeply on a broad range of sources, Hudson reveals that the banks experimental practices and projects in the Caribbean often led to embarrassing failure, and eventually literal erasure from the archives. Bankers and Empire is a groundbreaking book, one which will force readers to think anew about the relationship between capitalism and race" -- Publisher's description

3 editions

Ben Waber reviewed Bankers and Empire by Peter James Hudson

Lots of Bankers, Not Much Empire

3 stars

Hudson reviews the early history of American banking expansion into the Caribbean, with its sometimes corrupt practices and entanglements. This is extremely focused on individual actors, which while it can be entertaining gives very little insight into the sector as a whole, and while Hudson very clearly dislikes the industry much of the chronology here demonstrates fairly innocuous international expansion. There are of course, extremely problematic episodes (US military intervention to protect US bank assets, the American president of the Nicaraguan branch of a US bank serving as the Nicaraguan minister of finance, etc.), but inexplicably those events are merely mentioned and not explored in any detail. There's still a lot here to use as a reference in US financial industry in the Caribbean, but not much beyond that.

Ben Waber

rated it

November 29

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