Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930

by Emily S. Rosenberg

Winner of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize

Financial Missionaries to the World establishes the broad scope and significance of “dollar diplomacy”—the use of international lending and advising—to early-twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy. Combining diplomatic, economic, and cultural history, the distinguished historian Emily S. Rosenberg shows how private bank loans were extended to leverage the acceptance of American financial advisers by foreign governments. In an analysis striking in its relevance to contemporary debates over international loans, she reveals how a practice initially justified as a progressive means to extend “civilization” by promoting economic stability and progress became embroiled in controversy. Vocal critics at home and abroad charged that American loans and financial oversight constituted a new imperialism that fostered exploitation of less powerful nations. By the mid-1920s, Rosenberg explains, even early supporters of dollar diplomacy worried that by facilitating excessive borrowing, the practice might induce the very instability and default that it supposedly worked against.

"[A] major and superb contribution to the history of U.S. foreign relations. . . . [Emily S. Rosenberg] has opened up a whole new research field in international history."—Anders Stephanson, Journal of American History"[A] landmark in the historiography of American foreign relations."—Melvyn P. Leffler, author of A Preponderence of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War"Fascinating."—Christopher Clark, Times Literary Supplement

Genres: History

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1999

Reviews

[Eleanore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book truly excels in its grasp of good old-fashioned economic and diplomatic history. Rosenberg builds a compelling and clear narrative of a complex period in US diplomacy. She accomplishes the minor miracle of making the work of these early financial advising teams almost exciting - linking their activities to US interventions and the expansion and then later collapse of the global financial system. Unfortunately, in this work as in so many other recent histories there is a perceived need to justify the traditional in terms of newer cultural approaches. The term "discourses" crops up with distressing frequency and there is a rather sharp diversion in one chapter into an extended analysis of Tarzan which does little to support or extend the main thrust of the analysis. Nonetheless, this work is an essential contribution to a well-formed understanding of how the US attempted to project its economic power and influence in the early 20th century and to the origins of today's international financial system.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A weird book but interesting. Rosenberg discusses in detail the politics of "controlled loans" in the early 20th century, where foreign governments accepted American loans from investment banks, often encouraged by the State Department, and in return promised to appoint U.S. advisors (sometimes official government, sometimes "private") who would run customs and the central bank. This was shockingly common at the time, and a good number of the countries of the globe had their finances run by quiet American bureaucrats, from Haiti to the Dominican Republic to Persia to Poland to Liberia. This was certainly imperialism of a different stripe, but it was often requested by the local governments to ensure confidence in the loans (not some cases though, it was just forced in Haiti and the DR).

Of course almost all of these loans defaulted during the Depression, and it came out that some banks had suppressed their own internal suspicions about these loans. Sounds familiar.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

She sets out to present dollar diplomacy as a result of "cultural contexts that fostered the growth of professionalism, of scientific theories that accentuated racial and gender differences, and of the mass media's emphasis on the attractions and repulsions of primitivism. It was related to discourses of money, expertise, masculinity, and whiteness. Taking place within the realm of high politics and finance, professional supervision accompanied a broader cultural fascination with primitivism; both professionalism and primitivism inscribed otherness and hierarchy." (3)

Much of that is additive to the more basic argument that comes through clearly in her book -- and that has been advanced by Gary Gerstle -- that the government embraced public-private partnership as a means of extending government power despite constraints. Although she places less weight on domestic politics, dollar diplomacy also, and perhaps more directly, emerged as a result of domestic political constraints.

The rise of dollar diplomacy coincided with the rise of professionalization and new ideas about money ("professional-managerial discourse"); its fall coincided with a resurgence of antibank sentiment that translated into anti-imperialist critiques ("antibanking discourse").

Hers is a story about the relationship between economics and foreign policy that differs from the William Appleman Williams version focused on the open door.

[Dasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Financial Missionaries to the World offers a strong analysis of America’s dollar diplomacy, that through cultural, diplomatic and economic means became a new form of imperialism. Rosenberg’s integration of culture provides greater context than if it were to just analyze the diplomatic history of dollar diplomacy. Rather Rosenberg brings to light America’s need to civilize nations by bringing monetary stability and the want to be a guiding hand for less well-off nations, if those nations had governments that America approved of. If these countries did not, America used their military power to ensure that the right people were in power, which further lends to the concept of imperialism. The rise of economists and New York as a banking leader of the world fueled America’s ability to assert economic power over countries. Rosenberg examines dollar diplomacy from a primarily American perspective which leaves out the viewpoints of nations of which dollar diplomacy had been exerted on. However, the integration of culture and its impact on the growth of dollar diplomacy offered in Rosenberg’s book is a unique analysis otherwise not seen in the literature surrounding America’s practice of dollar diplomacy.

[Eda Naz]

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[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as background in a seminar paper about dollar diplomacy in the Dominican Republic, and this book was invaluable for its discussion in establishing the Dominican Customs Receivership. I was disappointed, however, there was no analysis of its final decade. One would assume that the receivership ended after the Trujillo came to power or after the 1930 hurricane destroyed the customs houses. But it limped along until 1940, the last gasp of early dollar diplomacy.

That being said, it's still a great book that does an amazing job of making a somewhat complex and dull subject digestible and interesting.