| Book Review | The American Historical Review, .

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Book Review

Canada and the United States

Emily S. Rosenberg. Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1999. Pp. x, 334. $45.00.

Nowhere does Brooks Adams make an appearance in this splendid and long-awaited book by Emily S. Rosenberg. Yet Adams's prediction in the 1890s of a global economic catastrophe, the product of his suspicion of the gold standard, anticipated key aspects of Rosenberg's critique of dollar diplomacy. Her thesis is intriguing. The history of dollar diplomacy between 1900 and 1930 reveals as much about the role of culture, the exercise of power, and masculine identity in foreign affairs as it does about the pursuit of economic interests. Through the issuance of controlled loans to stabilize currency and reschedule debts, government officials and investment bankers, using financial advisers as intermediaries, endeavored to spread abroad American influence in various guises. 1

With their belief in progress and their nation's civilizing mission nearly shattered by the depression of the 1890s, numerous Republican leaders, bankers, economists, and public intellectuals like New York Journal of Commerce financial correspondent Charles A. Conant placed their faith in the restorative qualities of the gold-exchange standard. For them, currency reform based on the availability of gold meant expanded markets and investment opportunities. Commerce, security, and spiritual uplift were inseparable for a generation of financial advisers, personified by economist Edwin Kemmerer of Princeton University. The worldview of these powerful men "celebrated both capitalism and imperialism" (p. 16). . . .

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