The Long Shadow of Default

“David Gill’s brilliant, deeply researched and stylish book makes important contributions to the history of both Britain and the United States, to their relations during the Second World War, and to a wider understanding of default. It is a model of what historical analysis brings to our understanding of the modern world.”—Martin Daunton, author of Just Taxes

“[E]nlightening. . . . As Gill shows in his deeply researched book, far from being sorted, the war debts have hung over Anglo-American relations for decades.”—Max Harris, senior fellow, Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation

“Gill provides a fascinating window into the dynamics of bilateral official lending, with a focus on wartime debts between allies. Using a wide range of archival materials, Gill details the domestic and international considerations behind the UK’s servicing of its 1917 debt until 1934, as well as its subsequent (and continuing) suspension of payments.”—Layna Mosley, author of Global Capital and National Governments

“Of debts arising from the Great War, Franklin Roosevelt said, ‘default . . . that word should never be said.’ And most often it isn’t, especially for the sum Britain has yet to repay the United States. Yet the failure to repay had a long history that affected Anglo-American cooperation in the Second World War, the Cold War, and afterward. A valuable study on the uses of mostly forgetting, if not fully forgiving, debt.”—Eric Rauchway, author of Why the New Deal Matters