After a decade of intensive external borrowing in the 1880s, Greece defaulted on its external debt in 1893. On this occasion private holders of Greek debt were mobilized, have formulated complaints and demands, and got organized in Committees, mainly in Great Britain, France and in the German Reich. Negotiations between the Committees and the Greek State took place between 1894 and 1897. Greece’s defeat in the 1897 Greco-Turkish War led to discussions on a peace treaty, during which the outstanding debt negotiations with its creditors were concluded.
In this announcement, the protest of private German bondholders is discussed using the schema of Moral Economy. A broader understanding of the term of Moral Economy in comparison to the one of E.P. Thompson’s is adopted. The extended understanding of Moral Economy enables the application of the term to modernity (late 19th century) and to modern phenomena (credit, indebtedness, sovereign default). The research is based on letters that German holders of Greek debt have addressed to the German Foreign Office, historical documents which are held in the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes in Berlin.
Without ignoring the broader framework related to capital transfers between core and peripheral economies, sovereign debt and defaults observed in late 19th century, and the particular conditions of Greek debtology and Political Economy, the focus is shifted on German private bondholders of Greek debt in 1893-1894. Questions, such as what was the social and economic status of German private bondholders; what was their understanding of credit and that of holding bonds of other sovereigns; what they demanded from their State and from Greece; on which grounds did they justify these demands; what kind of ethical reasoning and moral appropriateness are observed in the letters, are approached in this announcement.
Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung der Arbeitsbereiche NNG und ZG im Raum E0.143 statt. Insgesamt acht Historiker*innen geben uns Einblicke in ihre laufenden Forschungsprojekte. Alle an Geschichte Interessierten sind zum Zuhören und Mitdiskutieren jederzeit willkommen.
