This thesis inquiries into the ways in which the treatment of sovereign debt remained outside the public international law realm from the late 19th century to the interwar period. Using insights from historical sociology of law and law and global governance scholarship, it analyzes empirical evidence on the histories of international finance and law. First, it uses “entangled legalities” theory to analyze forms of relations around sovereign debt governance. Secondly, it analyzes the articulation between legal “entanglements” in this area and the formation of fields of international law. Based on empirical analysis, it finds a correlation between the marginalization of entanglements around sovereign debt and the consolidation of the discipline international law. Chapter 2 follows a group of Western international lawyers who observed sovereign debt management as they entered the field in France and Italy. Chapter 3 focuses on the debate on the use of force in relation to sovereign debt and the reception and legacies of the Drago doctrine. Chapter 4 describes developments at the League of Nations and debates at the Hague Academy of International Law in the early 1920s to study the kinds of law and legal expertise mobilized in response to sovereign debt events and their relationship with international law. Chapter 5 inquiries into the reception of Alexander Sack’s juridical analysis in fields of international law and the rise of research on sovereign debt and international law in the US field of power. The conclusion provides explanations for this marginalization, including creditor states’ attitudes towards the international legal order, and limitations of the analysis