The European financial crisis of 1931 was a pivotal moment in the economic and financial history of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival research and a cultural conceptual framework, There Will be the Devil To Pay offers a new and much needed understanding of the European financial crisis. It tells the dramatic story of the five months that led to the breakdown of the gold standard, writing the history of the crisis from the perspective of central bankers, private bankers, and government officials. It provides a new narrative of how those involved struggled to understand and respond to the crisis as it unfolded. Contributing to the emerging literature on radical uncertainty and narrative economics, this book provides a detailed analysis of how decision-makers confront uncertainty and shape narratives that create actionable knowledge and enable decision-making.

‘You may think that you know the 1931 financial crisis. But Per Hansen’s colourful ‘thick description’ places the crisis in a new light. Hansen pushes back against dominant narratives, highlighting the climate of radical uncertainty in which central bankers were forced to act. By bringing the crisis alive, he helps us see it in a new way.’

Barry Eichengreen - University of California, Berkeley

‘The crisis of 1931 is a seminal moment in financial history that has attracted historians for decades. Hansen provides a fresh perspective by focusing on the individuals involved, and how they made sense of the crisis as it unfolded. The result is a very readable and forensic narrative, focused on central bankers from the US and Britain as well as the nascent Bank for International Settlements. A valuable addition to our understanding of central banking in crisis.’

Catherine R. Schenk - University of Oxford

‘Imagining how people in the past understood their world is a major challenge for the historian. Based on a novel methodology, inspired by social science as well as history, Per Hansen offers a stimulating new perspective on events we thought we knew well. Most of all, he shows how much we miss when we ignore the words of historical actors or read them only through our own interpretative frames.’

Mary O’Sullivan - University of Geneva

‘The year 1931 witnessed the worst financial crisis of the twentieth century. Per Hansen’s vivid account describes how central bankers struggled to save the financial and monetary system under conditions of radical uncertainty, with a special focus on their prior beliefs, blind spots and adapting narratives. This ‘thick description’ is, so far, the most precise and realistic report of the annus horribilis.’

Tobias Straumann - University of Zurich

‘… a forward-looking narrative of the financial crisis based on extensive research in the archives of the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and Bank for International Settlements. … Recommended.’

J. L. Rosenbloom Source: CHOICE

‘For experts of interwar financial history or central banking, the book will prove valuable as a reference work. Researchers will appreciate the careful mining of relevant primary-source documents for their own projects.’

Samuel Zucker Source: International Affairs

'[A] gripping, blow-by-blow account of the two great crises that punctuated the Great Depression of the 1930s. [The book provides] a visceral sense of how events felt to contemporaries.'

Barry Eichengreen Source: Project Syndicate

'This is a thought-provoking study that deserves a wide readership among scholars for its novel assessment of 1931. Historians of interwar Europe would benefit from it as they consider the failure of the post-war peace.'

Martin Horn Source: Business History

'Providing many direct quotes and also covering minor incidents and secondary characters, Hansen offers an almost daily account of the crises that researchers will find helpful. The thick description he offers is not of his protagonists? lives, but a thick chronology in the form of a dense chronicle that trails their proposed remedies, abandoned cures, and frustrated solutions. In doing so Hansen has provided us with a sociological study of central banking activity in crisis.'

Nathan Marcus Source: The Economic History Review

'Per Hansen's new book, There Will Be the Devil to Pay, explores one of the most fascinating and pivotal moments in twentieth-century history: the European financial crisis of 1931. This book's success lies primarily in the new analytical focus used by the author. Challenging some dominant narratives of the crisis, Hansen's study shines a spotlight on central bankers as flesh-and-blood actors grappling with an unprecedented crisis. It employs a novel and interdisciplinary methodology that successfully blends economic, political, and cultural history. In doing so, it provides a new perspective on an episode long scrutinized by historians and offers a valuable addition to the literature.'

Gianandrea Nodari Source: Business History Review