The paper deals with a period of intense debates in the Ottoman Empire over economic policies, particularly concerning the management of imperial finances and private capital following the imperial default in 1875-6. These debates, mirroring worldwide discussions during this time of global financial crisis, often centered on the morality and efficiency of financial intermediaries, sometimes labeled as ‘usurers’, and their role in precipitating the crisis. One such criticism of ‘big capital’ and the governments that allowed it to dominate the finances of the Ottoman and other states including Russia, Spain, Argentina, and Mexico, was developed by Ruhi al-Khalidi shortly before his death in 1913. Khalidi came from one of Jerusalem’s prominent landowning families with a vast record of service in the imperial bureaucracy and is mostly known as one of the first opponents to Zionist settler colonialism. Much of the literature characterizes as ambivalent or contradictory early twentieth-century Palestinian elites’ view of the Zionist movement, whose economic achievements they both admired and resented, as part of their general fascination with Europe and resistance to its aggressive encroachment upon Ottoman sovereignty. However, Khalidi presented a much more nuanced perspective which relied on a global analysis of economic power relations and a concrete vision of state development and individual productivity, based on financial investment. His vision was profoundly shaped by the imperial default and its ongoing repercussions for Ottomans subjects of all walks of life, particularly peasants dispossessed from their land, but also merchants and artisans. As this paper will argue, drawing on one of his unstudied manuscripts from 1912, Khalidi’s ideas on sovereignty and development engaged with broader debates worldwide on the role of private capital in state finances and in society. Moreover, they reflected regional discourses and discussions that informed the agendas of nationalist movements in the late and post-Ottoman Arab world, sometimes to very different ends.