The City’s Defense examines how the City of London maintained its status as an international financial center. He traces the role of the Bank of England in restructuring the domestic, imperial, European, and international monetary systems in the aftermath of the First World War. Responding to mass unemployment and volatile exchange rates, the Bank expanded its reach into areas outside the traditional scope of central banking, including industrial policy and foreign affairs. It designed a system of economic governance that reinforced the preeminence of sterling as a reserve currency. Drawing on a range of archival evidence from national governments, private corporations, and international organizations, the book reevaluates our understanding of Britain’s impact on the global economic order.

My second book project explores the politics of banking regulation in Germany, c. 1870–1945. Exploring the links between national security and economic policy, the book shows how banking legislation evolved to address various government priorities, such as securing access to foreign credit and funding wartime expenditures. Through the work of bankers, diplomats, industrialists and civil servants, regulation served a political purpose, reflecting the shifting geopolitical priorities of the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich.

A third book project looks at the rise of economic democracy in interwar Europe. It shows how the expansion of the franchise to women and men in 1918 compelled political parties to adapt their electoral strategies and tailor economic concerns to a broader voting public. Drawing on archives from across Europe, my book will demonstrate how monetary and fiscal policy entered civic discourse.

These research projects have been supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Embassy of France’s Chateaubriand Fellowship, the Anglo-Austrian Society, Harvard Business School, and the Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge.

Past Research

My past work has dealt with a range of topics, including the history of banking regulation in Germany, role of gold in shaping the Bank of France’s monetary policy; the influence of experts in implementing post-WW1 monetary reforms; and the origins of economic statistics among the central banks of Europe.

Wartime Finance

The Third Reich established a new financial order in Central Europe. My article in Central European History examines one aspect of these changes, namely the evolution of banking law. After the seizure of power in 1933, Nazi officials weaponized financial and legal institutions to support the rearmament campaign. Driven by more than a desire for self-sufficiency (autarky) and expropriative control, the authorities devised a system of economic governance that perpetuated the conflict.

Banking Regulation

The 1934 Reich Banking Law was the first comprehensive regulation over the entire German banking system. It imposed new reporting guidelines, set liquidity standards, and managed the distribution of licenses. My article in the Business History Review traces the development of banking regulation as a matter of national security. By enacting new statutory requirements over liquidity and lending, state officials and central bankers sought to protect the German economy from foreign crises.

Economic Statistics

After the First World War, European central banks turned to experts for standardizing economic statistics. My article in Contemporary European History explores how the work of national central banks became compatible with the broader goals of interwar internationalism. Using archives from Belgium, France, Germany, the UK and the US, the article shows how efforts to align statistical terminology aimed to improved diplomatic relations.

Monetary Policy

Using the Bank of France’s weekly balance sheets, this project, published in Studies in Applied Economics, investigates the importance of gold and foreign-exchange reserves to monetary policies. It shows how frequent changes in the central bank’s holdings, coupled with adjustments to the discount rate and the procurement of foreign loans, reflected the changing priorities of the central bank in times of crisis.

Finance and Geopolitics

Economic advisers played a key role in the debates over Germany’s post-World War I reparations . In an advisory capacity, they offered policy recommendations to the members of the Dawes Committee in 1924 to address escalating geopolitical conflict. My research published in the Financial History Review shows how economists simultaneously aimed to resolve the fiscal problem of inflation and the geopolitical crisis of the 1923 Franco-Belgian invasion of the Ruhr.