Jennifer Siegel's For Peace and Money is a well-researched book that explores the connections between politics and finance in the relationship between Russia and the United Kingdom, and between the early Soviet Union, France, and the United Kingdom in the period from 1890 to 1922. Public and private archival sources from France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States, have been consulted and fully documented. What is omitted is a complementary study from the perspective of Germany, which could have provided a means of testing whether it was politics or finance that was most influential in dictating the final division of Europe into two competing alliances in the years leading up to the First World War. Siegel contends that “financial power is at the heart of political power” (11), and that view determines the approach she takes to analyzing negotiations over Russia's foreign borrowing before the First World War. She demonstrates how the political and the financial become mixed when governments negotiate the terms and conditions of foreign loans, especially if they have also entered into political alliances. This is clearly documented in the case of the loans raised during the First World War, when the British and French were desperate to keep the Russians engaged on the Eastern Front as a counter to their efforts on the Western Front. It also emerges in the years after the First World War, when attempts were made by the British and French governments to persuade the Soviet Union to honor its debts. However, what is less clear is the degree to which finance triumphed over politics in the complex negotiations that took place over Russian loans in the years before the war. Reading the evidence as presented by Siegel—that is, from the perspective of a financial rather than a diplomatic historian—suggests a much more fluid situation. German financiers tried to remain engaged though hampered by their own government, while British and French financiers were much less enthusiastic despite the political links. Throughout, Russian negotiators exploited the bargaining power that shifting political tensions provided, along with divisions between and within Berlin, London, New York, and Paris as these financial centers competed for business. Accounts of the negotiations conducted by other sovereign states for loans at this time, such as China, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire, indicate their ability to exploit divisions among the bankers and politicians to their own advantage. It is interesting to speculate what a Belgian view would be, both at government level and among bankers, considering the commitment that investors from that country had towards investments in Russia, especially tramway companies.

Through a series of chronologically arranged chapters covering, successively, the periods 1894–1903, 1904–6, 1907–13, and 1914–17, Siegel examines in depth the negotiations conducted by the Russian government over each new foreign loan. A final chapter, covering the years 1917 to 1922, examines the unsuccessful attempts to persuade the Soviet Union to commit itself to pay interest on the loans and then repay the loans to which the Tsarist government had committed Russia. It was not until the 1980s and ‘90s that the Soviet Union eventually recognized these debts and made a token repayment. In each of the chapters Siegel shies away from providing a definitive answer to the question of whether finance drove politics or politics drove finance. Instead, she puts forward the view that the two were closely intertwined, driven by the unstable nature of European foreign relations after the defeat of France in 1871 and the emergence of a unified Germany, leaving France looking for allies and Russia wary of a newly emerged German state. In all probability this situation did have a bearing on Russia's switch from Germany to France as the source of external funds and the willingness of French investors to provide 80 percent of the value of the loans raised by the Russian government prior to the outbreak of the First World War. More problematic is the position of the United Kingdom, which had much weaker ties to Russia as a political ally. Only 14 percent of the funds raised by the Russian government before the outbreak of war came via London. Considering the status of London as a global financial center and the extensive use made of it by German banks, this proportion does not appear unduly high. During the war around 80 percent of the funds raised by Russia were obtained through London, which indicates the importance of the City of London as a financial center and the significance of political ties in the midst of a battle for survival. Similarly, the evidence Siegel presents in the last chapter suggests that the British negotiators took a very pragmatic stance over the fate of existing Russian loans, willing to sacrifice the interests of British financiers in an attempt to reestablish commercial ties with Russia. In contrast, the French government was much less willing to write off these debts. Thus, while a strong case can be made for a coincidence of finance and politics in the French case, whatever the direction of causality, the coincidence for the United Kingdom is much weaker, a judgment that resonates with the conclusions drawn by many British financial historians over recent years despite attempts by political historians to suggest otherwise.

As an exercise in diplomatic history, this book deserves great praise, not least for the attempt to broaden the analysis to include international finance. One of the outcomes of the alliances that developed before the First World War was to facilitate Russian access to the capital markets of Paris and London. However, where the book is weak is the failure to recognize that Paris and London were not identical in the facilities they offered to borrowers, and neither were Berlin and New York. Paris offered excellent openings for sovereign borrowers, especially from Europe and particularly if approved of by the French government. London excelled in terms of corporate bond issues, especially railways as well as mining companies, and smaller issues such as those of municipalities. In contrast, Berlin was much more a domestic capital market, as was New York. What needs to be done is to add an understanding of the complexities of international finance to an understanding of the complexities of international politics, so as to produce a comprehensive account of what took place in the years before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.