Control, Reform and Political Competition: Serbia, 1878–1914

Abstract

The IFC experiences of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire emerged in late 1870s as a result of a wave of defaults, which newly independent states of the Balkans managed to avoid as they were still at the early stages of borrowing in international financial markets. However, the 1890s witnessed another surge of sovereign debt crises, which resulted in the defaults of Greece and Serbia. Following the chronological order of IFC appearances in the region, in this chapter I first explore Serbia’s experience of foreign control, which was established in 1895 — just three years earlier than the Greek case. The first section provides a brief review of Serbia’s history of sovereign borrowing from the Berlin Treaty to the foundation of IFC in 1895. In the second half of the chapter, I discuss the functioning of the Autonomous Monopoly Administration of Serbia, which represented a transition from direct fiscal control of creditors to a less intrusive method of financial supervision.