The Price of War and Revolution: Foreign Finance, International Alliances, and the Funding of Late Imperial Russia

Ohio State University

Thursday, November 3, 2016  |  12:30 PM  |  Eastwoods Room (UNB 2.102)

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Dr. Siegel will examine the give and take between high finance, international politics and domestic pressures through the lens of the early twentieth century Anglo-Russo-French financial relationship. The story of British and French private and government loans to Russia in the late imperial period up to the Genoa Conference of 1922 is a classic tale of money and power in the modern era—an age of economic interconnectivity and great power interdependency. Imperial Russia was the foremost international debtor country in pre-World War I Europe. From the forging of the Franco-Russian alliance onwards, Russia’s needs were met, first and foremost, by Russia’s allies and diplomatic partners in the developing Triple Entente. In the case of Russia’s relationships with both France and Great Britain, an open pocketbook primed the pump, facilitating the good spirits that fostered agreement. And Russia’s continued access to those ready lenders ensured that the empire of the Tsars would not be tempted away from its alliance and entente partners.

Jennifer Siegel joined the OSU Department of History in the fall of 2003. She received her B.A. and her Ph.D. from Yale University, the latter in 1998. A recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, including an Olin Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, and a Smith Richardson Foundation Junior Faculty Fellowship, Dr. Siegel specializes in modern European diplomatic and military history, with a focus on the British and Russian Empires. She is the author of For Peace and Money: French and British Finance in the Service of Tsars and Commissars (Oxford University Press: 2014)  and Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (I.B. Tauris, 2002), which won the 2003 AAASS Barbara Jelavich Prize.