Race, debt and empire: Racialising the Newfoundland financial crisis of 1933

Abstract

The recent global financial crisis and related sovereign debt crises in Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Puerto Rico and beyond have highlighted the pressing task of understanding how such crises reshape the spaces we live in. Geographers, most notably David Harvey, have traced the historical roots of the current crisis to the transformation of global financial capitalism since the 1970s. There has, however, been less work on understanding the nature and management of financial crises embedded in different historical geographies. This paper seeks to contribute to that task by investigating Newfoundland's sovereign debt crisis during the Great Depression and its management by the British Empire. Newfoundland, then an independent British Dominion, uniquely relinquished self‐government in return for financial aid. Managing the crisis required difficult ideological work. I argue that to reinforce an imperial geography underpinned by racial distinctions, and to preclude the possibility of default, Newfoundland was scripted as a racially degenerate place in need of metropolitan intervention. The financial crisis produced new racialised geographies that had significant effects on Newfoundland's future.