February 15, 2008

Jennifer Siegel (Ohio State University)

Money, Peace and Power:
Loans to Russia and the (Un)Making of the Triple Entente

Imperial Russia was the foremost international debtor country in pre-World War I Europe. To finance the modernization of industry, the construction of public works projects, railroad construction, and the development and adventures of the military-industrial complex, Russia’s ministers of finance, municipal leaders, and nascent manufacturing class turned, time and time again in the late imperial period, to foreign capital. This talk will examine the history of British and French public and private bank loans to Russia in the late imperial and early Soviet periods, focusing on the ways that non-governmental and sometimes transnational actors were able to influence both British and French foreign policy and Russian foreign and domestic policy. There are three main themes that will be addressed: the role of individual financiers and policy makers; the importance of foreign capital in late imperial Russian policy; and the particular role of British capital and financial investment in the construction and strengthening of the Anglo-Russo-French entente. Most significantly, this talk will look beyond the realm of high politics and state-centered decision making in the formation of foreign policy, offering insights into the forms and functions of diplomatic alliances.

Jennifer Siegel is Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University. She received her B.A. and her Ph.D. from Yale University, the latter in 1998. She specializes in modern European diplomatic and military history, with a focus on the British and Russian Empires. She is the author of Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (I.B. Tauris, 2002), which won the 2003 AAASS Barbara Jelavich Prize. She has published articles on intelligence history, and co-edited Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limits of Intelligence in International Society (Praeger, 2005). Her current research projects include an exploration of British and French private and government bank loans to Russia in the late imperial period up to the Genoa Conference of 1922, tentatively entitled "For Peace and Money.”