A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of DemocracyFor the greater part of recorded history the most successful and powerful states were autocracies; yet now the world is increasingly dominated by democracies. In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped. From that point on, the pressures of war favored states with the greatest public creditworthiness; and the most creditworthy states were invariably those in which the people who provided the money also controlled the government. Democracy had found a secret weapon and the era of the citizen creditor was born. Macdonald unfolds this tale in a sweeping history that starts in biblical times, passes via medieval Italy to the wars and revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and ends with the great bond drives that financed the two world wars. |
Contents
TRIBES AND EMPIRES | 10 |
Barbarians at the Gate | 18 |
The Free Men Fight Back | 24 |
Greeks and Their Gifts | 31 |
Civic Debt | 36 |
Kings and Tyrants | 42 |
The Carthaginian Wars | 45 |
Imperium Romanum | 51 |
Mopping Up | 221 |
The Ruling Class | 227 |
The Dilemma | 239 |
The Limits of Absolution | 255 |
Aristocratic Revolution | 266 |
REVOLUTION | 272 |
A New World | 277 |
The First and Second American Revolutions | 289 |
Breakdown | 56 |
CITIZEN CREDITORS | 67 |
La Serenissima | 72 |
La Superba | 77 |
The Monte Comune | 81 |
The Twilight of Repayable Taxes | 84 |
San Giorgo | 94 |
Selfish Citizens | 100 |
SOVEREIGN DEBT | 105 |
The Treasure of the Indies | 115 |
Antwerp and Lyons | 122 |
Serial Bankruptcy | 128 |
Fole des Offices | 138 |
RESISTANCE TO THE HEGEMON | 148 |
Regicide | 157 |
Glorious Revolution | 166 |
THE CHIMERA | 179 |
Postbellum Depression | 185 |
The Chimera | 190 |
The Bubble | 205 |
THE DILEMMA | 220 |
Enemies of the People | 307 |
The Elephant and the Whale | 334 |
BOURGEOIS CENTURY | 347 |
Pax Britannica | 348 |
The Heyday of Bourgeois Finance | 355 |
Ties of Identity | 366 |
A Nation of Rentiers | 377 |
Greenbacks and 520s | 384 |
NATIONS AT ARMS | 400 |
The Settlement of Accounts Part I | 413 |
Total War Part II | 435 |
Totalitarian War | 445 |
The Settlement of Accounts Part II | 456 |
THE END OF THE AFFAIR | 465 |
A Note on Currencies | 477 |
Glossary | 483 |
Notes | 487 |
Bibliography | 523 |
Acknowledgments | 545 |
547 | |
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A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy James Macdonald No preview available - 2003 |