International Capital Markets and American Economic Growth, 1820–1914

This book is a study of the capital transfers to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, for the latter decades of that period, of the transfers from the United States to the rest of the world - particularly Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America. It provides a quantitative estimate of the level and industrial composition of those transfers, and qualitative descriptions of the sources and uses of those funds; and it attempts to assess the role of those foreign transfers in the economic development of the recipient economies. In the process, it describes the evolution of the American domestic capital market. Finally, it explores the issue of domestic political response to foreign investment, attempting to explain why the political reaction was so negative and so intense in Latin America and in the American West, but so positive in Canada and the eastern United States.

"This inquiry is well conceived and is clearly and concisely presented. Documentation is thorough and, with the bbiliography, serves as an excellent review and update of the pertinent sources." Paul Abrahams, The Journal of American History, "...a well documented overview of America's experience in the international capital market." Kerry Odell, American Historical Review, "This small book manages to cram a lot into a little, and to do it rather well." James R. Lothian, Journal of Interdisciplinary History