The Effect of Southern State Bond Repudiation and British Debt Collection Efforts on Anglo-American Relations, 1840–1940

Abstract

AbstractBritish officials' largely negative impression of the United States caused by America's intransigence in allowing renegotiation of Britain's First World War debts must be viewed against a backdrop of a longstanding debtor-creditor relationship between the two nations. Since the mid-nineteenth century, British creditors, largely through the efforts of the London-based Corporation of Foreign Bondholders, vigorously yet unsuccessfully attempted to collect large debts on repudiated American state bonds. This article provides greater understanding of this history and shows that the nineteenth-century debt controversy might well have been avoided to the economic benefit of the British and particularly the American South.