Today, as the Covid-19 pandemic opens up a dramatic new crisis, reconnecting the history of capitalism and that of democracy seems one of the most urgent intellectual and political tasks of our time. This global political history of public debt is a contribution to this debate and will be of interest to financial, economic, and political historians and researchers.

Part I Political Crises and the Legitimacy of Public Debts (1770s-1860s).- 1. An Empire of Debts? Spain and Its Colonial Realm.- 2. Publicity, Debt, and Politics: The Old Regime and the French Revolution.- 3. Politics of Credit: Government Borrowing and Political Regimes in Sweden.- 4. Public Debt and Democratic Statecraft in Nineteenth-Century France.- Part II Global Capital, Imperial Expansions, and Changing Sovereignties (1860s-1914).- 5. The Entanglements of Domestic Polities: Public Debt and European Interventions in Latin America.- 6. Leveraging Foreign Control: Reform in the Ottoman Empire.- 7. The Unforeseen Path of Debt Imperialism: Local Struggles, Transnational Knowledge, and Colonialism in Egypt.- 8. Trading Sovereignty for Capital? Public Debt in West Africa, 1871-1914.- 9. The Domestic Effects of Foreign Capital: Public Debt and Regional Inequalities in Late Qing China.- 10. Fiscal Federalism: Local Debt and the Construction of the Modern State in the United States and France.- Part III The Great Transformation of Public Debts (1914-1970s).- 11. The Financial Challenges of Total War: Britain, France, and Their Empires in the First World War.- 12. Beyond Democracy or Dictatorship: Structuring Sovereign Debt in Germany from Weimar to the Postwar Period.- 13. The Communist World of Public Debt (1917-1991): The Failure of a Countermodel?.- 14. Debt Without Taxation: Iraq, Syria, and the Crisis of Empires from the Mandates to the Cold War Era.- Part IV The Political Roads to Financial Markets and Global Debt Crisis (1970s).- 15. From Debt Dirigisme to Debt Markets in France and India.- 16. The Political Economy of Debt Crisis: State, Banks, and the Financialization of Public Debt in Italy since the 1970s.- 17. From a Multilateral Broker to the National Judge: The Law and Governance of Sovereign Debt Restructuring, 1980-2015.- 18. Of Bond Vigilantes, Central Bankers, and the Crisis of 2008.- Part V Conclusion: On the Historical Uses of Numbers and Words.- 19. The History and Politics of Public Debt Accounting.- 20. The Words of Public Debts: A Political Repertoire.