The European Debt Crisis

"When people think of Germany’s relation to Greece in the twentieth century, they think of the Nazi occupation and the sovereign debt crisis. But as Christos Tsakas reveals in this stimulating work, in between came West Germany’s sponsoring role in the political integration of Greece in Europe, without which recent austerity debates would never have been possible. The book successfully deconstructs a more simplistic “blame game” — as the best history often does."

In the midst of political decline and burgeoning financial problems in the late nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire became embroiled in a borrowing frenzy, which eventually resulted in the financial collapse of the empire.