There Will Be the Devil to Pay

Per H. Hansen is a professor in the Department of Business Humanities and Law at Copenhagen Business School. He is a past president of the Business History Conference and the recipient of the Newcomen Article Prize (2008), the Henrietta Larson Article Award (2012) and the Hagley Prize for the best book in Business History (2019).

• 1. Introduction; 2. Central bankers and their world; 3. Preparing for crisis (May 11 – May 19); 4. Foreign Creditors (May 16 – May 25); 5. Moratorium or guarantee? (May 25 – May 27); 6. Guarantee at last? (May 26 – June 1); 7. Releasing the BIS credit (May 29 – June 5); 8. Surrounded with trouble (June 5 – June 10); 9. Where and how to place? (June 8 – June 13); 10. A world political problem (June 11 – June 16); 11. Francis Rodd makes sense – and a plot (June 9 – June 20); 12. To act now if we are to act at all (June 16 – June 27); 13. Germany will collapse (June 19 – July 10); 14. Anxiety within Germany at climax (July 11 – July 23); 15. Going off the Gold Standard? (July 14 – August 21); 16. As for the future of England (August 21 – September 17); 17. Exit (September 16 – October 23); The End (2024).

'You may think that you know the 1931 financial crisis. But Per Hansen's colourful 'thick description' places the crisis in a new light. Hansen pushes back against dominant narratives, highlighting the climate of radical uncertainty in which central bankers were forced to act. By bringing the crisis alive, he helps us see it in a new way.' Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley