As government indebtedness spikes to historic highs with the pandemic, and the next wave of defaults looms large, this timely collection of essays, edited by Pierre Pénet and Juan Flores Zendejas, zooms in on the inner workings of debt workouts in the aftermath of sovereign debt crises, and sheds light on how global asymmetries of power have played out in the renegotiation of creditor-debtor relationships throughout history.

Guided by the premise that “the norm of debt repayment is politically and historically variable,” in 2017-2018 the editors organized a series of workshops on sovereign debt resolution in order to bring experts in the fields of economics, history, law, political science, and sociology together for a truly interdisciplinary exchange. The result of this collective endeavor is an excellent collection of carefully curated articles, which seeks to reconceptualize the political economy of debt dispute resolution and reframe prevailing conceptions of the relationship between sovereign debt and imperialism. To those ends, it examines the actors, tools, and forums governing the framing and settlement of debt disputes during pivotal episodes, from colonial-empire building to hegemony. Tracing debt disputes from the rise of foreign debt markets in the early nineteenth century to our days, the book is staggering in its scope. And in addition to their breadth in geography and time, these case studies draw from a variety of sources and methodologies.

The volume challenges the oversimplified economic account that, following a default, the odds of reaching a settlement depend solely on the debtor’s capacity to pay and its interest in maintaining a reputation in foreign markets. History clouds this “sanitized” picture but does not just simply “complicate” the story: the editors’ and authors’ sustained focus and commitment to distill the logic behind actors’ behaviors and the unwritten principles and practices framing the negotiations and settlement of sovereign debt, accord us the insight that political contingencies and historical circumstances infuse meaning into notions of debt and of the sanctity of contracts. By giving states agency—and thus departing from the literature’s representative-agent assumption, which neglects conflicts of interests within the debtor country—this fresh approach pays off: the reader emerges with a clear picture of how the rules and structure of the sovereign debt resolution game influences, and is influenced by, agents’ maneuvering.

The book is organized into four sections, each containing three chapters ordered around a cluster of sovereign defaults that track shifts in the paradigm of sovereign debt resolution: nineteenth-century default episodes, interwar defaults, 1960-70s postcolonial transition defaults, and post-1990s cases. Following a commendable introduction (Chapter 1), in which the editors weave in the analytical frameworks that underpin the entire collection, Section I explores the linkages between debt markets and colonial history. Chapter 2 documents the emergence of creative new legal templates, such as diplomatic conventions and direct contracting, in response to defaults in Latin America. In contrast, the reaction of imperial powers to defaults in Egypt and Tunisia led to armed intervention and the expansion of colonial rule, the histories of which are reviewed in Chapter 3. While these two chapters showcase sovereign debt as a tool of empire building, Chapter 4 explores the impact of imperialism’s waning on the government debt markets in India and Australia.

Section II ponders the conundrum faced by private creditors in the postwar context, who were caught between dried-up capital markets (whose threat to block access could hence no longer serve as their bargaining chip) and creditor states’ willingness to sacrifice their private creditors’ expectations of repayment in order to advance geopolitical goals. Chapter 5 uncovers the virtually neglected yet decisive role that Mexican elites played in forging the normalization of Mexico-U.S. bilateral relationships. Chapter 6 highlights the principle-based approach that framed the negotiation of the 1953 London Debt Agreement on German Debts, providing extraordinary relief to Germany. Chapter 7 surveys a large sample of cases to verify that this new era of interstate debt diplomacies resulted in longer negotiations and lower recovery for creditors than previous periods had.

Section III looks at issues arising from postcolonial debt disputes of the 1960-70s that pitted colonizers against their formers colonies. In Chapters 8 and 9, it hosts a critical review of the intellectual histories and legacies of two conflicting international law doctrines on state succession with respect to debts; and, in Chapter 10, of the activist policies of the then recently founded UNCTAD that sought to correct power imbalances between North and South.

Section IV turns to post-1990s developments connected to the increasing “legalization” of sovereign debt: the enactment of anti-vulture funds legislation in Europe (Chapter 11), the resurgence of the odious debt doctrine applied to Venezuelan bonds (Chapter 12), and the binding power of legal clauses in the Puerto Rico debacle (Chapter 13). The concluding remarks reflect on the multiple layers of meaning embedded in such politically laden terms as “colonial,” “postcolonial,” and “hegemonic,” used to characterize debt diplomacies throughout this volume, and their relevance for scholarly debate.

As with any good work moving the field forward, this volume certainly contains points that are up for debate and leave unanswered questions—all of which will open avenues for future engagement. As a small quibble: the current analytical framework relying on the chronological historical-context based categorization of “sovereign diplomacies” could be extended to consider more explicitly the theoretical implications of other dimensions, such as for instance the identity of the creditor—including multilateral or official bilateral—or whether negotiations are preemptive or post-default. Relatedly, the term “diplomacies” in the title might give the misleading initial impression that the book’s scope is limited to ex ante official state involvement, working through representatives within diplomatic missions. This volume, however, encompasses a larger ecosystem of players—including bankers, international organizations, specialized intergovernmental forums, lawyers, courts, and bondholder committees—who are both public and private, and some of whose actions are decidedly “non-diplomatic.”

To sum up, this edited volume is more than the sum of its excellent parts, and is sure to become a key point of reference for anyone interested in the history of sovereign debt.