Imperial Bailout: The Default That Shook the British Empire

In the late 19th century, Baring Brothers & Co. was one of the oldest and most prestigious merchant banks in London, financing everything from the Louisiana Purchase to the Napoleonic Wars. But in 1890, their insatiable appetite for high-yield emerging market debt brought the entire British Empire to the brink of financial collapse. The bank had aggressively over-leveraged itself in speculative ...