After a brief introduction to the outbreak of the Austrian Credit Anstalt crisis in May 1931 and the early response by central bankers from Bank of England, the BIS and the New York Federal Reserve Bank, this chapter proceeds to present the book’s overall issues and main concepts, which will be used as a heuristic framework throughout the narrative. The main concepts of the book are radical uncertainty, sensemaking, narrative emplotment, imagined futures and epistemic communities. In the chapter, I discuss how these concepts are helpful in understanding central bankers’, and other actors’, decision-making and practices in the five month from May through September. The chapter also discusses my analytical strategy and presents the empirical material, which comes from the Bank of England, Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the J.P. Morgan Archive, the Rothschild Archive and a few others. At the end of the chapter, I present the structure of the book.

Chapter 11, Francis Rodd makes sense - and a plot, (June 9 - June 20). In this chapter I change focus to Rodd’s retrospective sensemaking. I quote in full a long note by Rodd written in the aftermath of the loan from Bank of England where he tells his narrative of what happened from the BIS board meeting on June 8 to June 16. Rodd clearly blame the French government, but not the Banque de France. After this, the perspectiev shifts to that of Pierre Quesnay, who tells his view about the British loan and how it came about. The chapter ends by showing how Rodd leaving Vienna.