Before the war billions had been lent by private lenders in London and Paris, the rich core of Imperial Europe, to private and public borrowers in peripheral nations.15 As of 1915, not only had the source of lending shifted to Wall Street, it was no longer railways in Russia or diamond prospectors in South Africa queuing up for credit. The most powerful states of Europe were now borrowing from private citizens in the United States and anyone else who would provide credit. Lending of this kind, by private investors in one rich country to the governments of other rich developed countries, in a
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