Book cover of Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

Book description

From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. A host of financial entities sought to control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Bankers and Empire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Recovering histories nearly erased from the archival record is no easy task.

Hudson takes this daunting challenge on here as he traces the hidden ties binding the Gilded Age’s exploitative racial capitalist system with Wall Street’s subsequent imperial practices in the Caribbean. It’s a sordid tale that still resonates today; some of these same financial colonizers of the Caribbean still exist in the guise of Citigroup and Chase. 

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