Sovereign Debt Diplomacies revisits the meaning of sovereign debt in relation to colonial history and postcolonial developments. It offers three main contributions. The first contribution is historical. The volume historicises a research field that has so far focused primarily on the post-1980 years. The second contribution adds a ‘law and society’ dimension to studies of debt. Finally, it imports insights from, and contributes to the body of research currently developed in the Humanities under the label ‘colonial and postcolonial studies’.