History provides many insights to address the issue of sovereign debt defaults. This article first presents a detailed account of defaults in historical perspective. It then discusses the solutions devised in the past to address sovereign debt crises and puts these into perspective with...

This paper describes George Washington's administration response to a plea for emergency war financing from French colonists who were trying to quash a slave rebellion in Haiti (then Saint Domingue). Washington bypassed Congress and authorized assistance to the French planters, hoping that...