Most economic historians of World War I and the interwar period focus on the “economic problems” facing countries because of the monetary and fi nancial outcomes of war: soaring infl ation and mounting debt had compromised countries’ creditworthiness, creating deep uncertainty and threatening capital fl ight. But looking deeper at these dynamics, it emerges that economic uncertainty was only a part of the problem. Part of what this book will explore is how economic uncertainty in these postwar countries had a political basis— indeed, how the economic and political crises were inseparable, with the former imposed by the latter. Th e postwar fi nancial crisis was a crisis of legitimacy for capital order and its social relations.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 110