[Verse 1]
Eighteen seventy-five, Khedive Ismail's broke,
Selling Suez paper up in London smoke,
Disraeli grabs the shares for four million pound,
Rothschild wires the cash before the sun goes round,
By seventy-six the Caisse de la Dette walks in,
Counting every piaster underneath his chin,
Six years later British boots on Cairo sand,
A canal deed turned into an occupied land.
[Chorus]
Gunboats and debt commissions, sailing in to collect the rent,
Sell the stream, seize the till, that's how an empire's bent,
Cairo, Constantinople, Athens, Caracas too,
When a treasury runs empty, someone else holds the cue,
Mortgage the minarets, mortgage the sea,
That's the ledger logic of supersanctioned decree.
[Verse 2]
Sultan's coffers crumble in seventy-five as well,
Default rings out across Istanbul like a bell,
By eighty-one the Decree of Muharrem's signed,
Birth of the Public Debt Administration, refined,
Foreign clerks now collecting the tobacco and the salt,
Silk revenue siphoned, no need to find a fault,
A state within a state runs the harvest and the trade,
Sovereignty sliced thin, one tariff stamp at a time.
[Chorus]
Gunboats and debt commissions, sailing in to collect the rent,
Sell the stream, seize the till, that's how an empire's bent,
Cairo, Constantinople, Athens, Caracas too,
When a treasury runs empty, someone else holds the cue,
Mortgage the minarets, mortgage the sea,
That's the ledger logic of supersanctioned decree.
[Verse 3]
Ninety-three in Athens, the drachma's taking flight,
War with the Ottomans in ninety-seven, a losing fight,
Ninety-eight arrives, the Powers draw the line,
International Financial Commission keeps the spine,
Customs and monopolies locked behind their vault,
Greek parliament watching bondholders call the halt.
[Bridge]
Fast-forward through the decades, same old tune repeats,
Caracas, 1902, the British fleet completes
A blockade of the harbor, cannons in the bay,
Until Luis Drago scribbles out a sharper way:
No force for private debt, the doctrine starts to form,
But Roosevelt's Corollary flips it to his norm—
Nineteen-oh-four, Big Stick policing the hemisphere,
Mitchener and Weidenmier call the whole thing clear:
Not loans, not treaties, but supersanctions bare,
Troika in Athens later breathes the same cold air.
[Verse 4]
Trade your canal, trade your customs, trade your silk cocoon,
Hand the salt pans over, hum a bondholder's tune,
From Memphis on the Nile to Caracas on the coast,
The gunboat and the ledger always toast the same cold toast.
[Chorus]
Gunboats and debt commissions, sailing in to collect the rent,
Sell the stream, seize the till, that's how an empire's bent,
Cairo, Constantinople, Athens, Caracas too,
When a treasury runs empty, someone else holds the cue,
Mortgage the minarets, mortgage the sea,
That's the ledger logic of supersanctioned decree.
[Outro]
Salt, tobacco, silk, and shares,
Someone always counts what's theirs,
Default today, occupied tomorrow—
History keeps the same bill to borrow.