Finance & Migration
This conference will look at the relationship between the financial sector and migration – taking a comparative historical view.
It’s impossible to look at human history without acknowledging continuous migratory flows and mass movements with the rise and fall of empires and nations. We are interested in scholarly work on how these movements of people were financed during chaotic times and how these migrants were integrated into the financial systems of the country of their arrival. Which is the spectrum of agency between private networks, state responsibility and the banks in between?
Considering the excellent archival sources of the National Bank of Greece, the case of Greece after the end of the Ottoman Empire and the ensuing population exchange with Turkey is a particularly interesting case to study. It offers an opportunity to revisit the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and the role of the League of Nations from this angle. How were the integration and rehabilitation of these refugees financed? Topics of interest include the provision of immediate economic relief, launch and management of refugee loans and exchangeable property, urban rehabilitation, redistribution of lands and the link between migration, finance and industrialisation. Research on this case could come from the perspectives of the League of Nations (Geneva), the Foreign Office Records (U.K.), the Bank
of England, Hambros Bank (and other foreign banks that underwrote the Greek refugee loans), the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, the Agricultural Bank of Greece Archives, the Greek State Archives, etc.
The cases to be studied in this regard are manifold. After the Great War and the end of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, European States were … READ MORE