Conclusion

Abstract

This book has reconstructed the ways in which finance inflected politics in Australia and Canada in the decade and a half preceding the Great War. This politics of finance was, ultimately, generated by the processes of economic development prevalent in settler capitalist economies. As these societies absorbed large numbers of migrants they also needed capital. Railways, urban utilities, ports, farms, factories and mines, all had to be constructed to put these new hands to work. This need for capital, as Chapter 1 showed, frequently ran beyond the capacity of local capital markets, especially during booms and when large infrastructure projects were undertaken. Notwithstanding increasing American investment in Canada from 1900 and Edwardian Australia’s temporary reliance on local resources, Britain was the lender par excellence prior to 1914. This dependence on British financiers drew borrowing groups in settler societies to the Square Mile; the need to manage past debts maintained the resultant bonds.