This book presents answers to some of the key questions about the economics of imperialism.

Historians have so far made few attempts to assess directly the costs and benefits of Britain's investment in empire. This book presents answers to some of the key questions about the economics of imperialism: how large was the flow of finance to the empire? How great were the profits on empire investment? What were the social costs of maintaining the empire? Who received the profits, and who bore the costs? The authors show that colonial finance did not dominate British capital markets; returns from empire investment were not high in comparison to earnings in the domestic and foreign...

This book examines the economic impact and the political economy of foreign investment in the United States and of American investment abroad. It provides quantitative estimates and qualitative descriptions of the sources and uses of those funds and, in the process, an analysis of the symbiotic relationship between the New York and London stock exchanges and of the evolution of the American domestic capital market. Finally, it explores the domestic political response to foreign investment in Latin America, in Canada, and in the United States.

This study examines the impact of British capital flows on the evolution of capital markets in four countries--Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States--over the years 1865 to 1914. In substantive chapters on each of the countries it offers parallel histories of the evolution of their financial infrastructures--commercial banks, nonbank intermediaries, primary security markets, formal secondary security markets, and the institutions that provide the international financial links connecting the frontier country with the British capital market.