Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930 Book

This book truly excels in its grasp of good old-fashioned economic and diplomatic history. Rosenberg builds a compelling and clear narrative of a complex period in US diplomacy. She accomplishes the minor miracle of making the work of these early financial advising teams almost exciting - linking their activities to US interventions and the expansion and then later collapse of the global financial system. Unfortunately, in this work as in so many other recent histories there is a perceived need to justify the traditional in terms of newer cultural approaches. The term "discourses" crops up with distressing frequency and there is a rather sharp diversion in one chapter into an extended analysis of Tarzan which does little to support or extend the main thrust of the analysis. Nonetheless, this work is an essential contribution to a well-formed understanding of how the US attempted to project its economic power and influence in the early 20th century and to the origins of today's international financial system.