War Finance in Britain

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, significant question marks hung over the capacity of the world’s wealthiest economies to sustain a long international conflict. This book goes beyond macroeconomic perspectives on war financing to show in highly granular detail how the war was financed in Britain, using previously unstudied data to explore at a societal level how this capital was raised. It offers a framework for understanding how economic and financial policy during wartime became instruments of capital-raising that were crucial to the eventual outcome of the first-ever global war and were not simply ancillary factors affecting military efforts.

Using rich archival sources from the Bank of England, the author explores the identities and demographics of the investors who bought bonds that financed Britain during the First World War. The book examines the different policies and strategies employed to bring investors into the war from across society, including different classes and genders, and demonstrates how the need to raise capital for Allied victory ultimately altered not only the distribution of income and capital in Britain but also the form in which it was held. The book also analyses Britain’s war debt and re-financing efforts in this context, spanning a timeline from 1914 up until 1932. This book will be a fascinating read for scholars and students of economic, financial and military history.