Quentin Bruneau, States and the masters of capital: sovereign lending, old and new, Columbia University Press, December 2022, 240 pages

Written records of sovereign borrowing date back more than 2,000 years, but longer-term sovereign debt only became a regular feature in the late Middle Ages. The focus of Quentin Bruneau’s book is on the 19^th and early 20^th centuries (but presented in contrast to the form that cross-border private sector sovereign lending has taken since such lending re-emerged