During the mid-19th century, the Egyptian and Ottoman governments began borrowing on the international debt market to finance ambitious modernization projects, administrative reforms and war. A spiraling debt-deficit cycle ensued and after credit dried up worldwide in the "Great Depression" of 1873, the Ottoman and Egyptian treasuries struggled to meet payments on coupons due. By 1876, they were bankrupt. After several years and multiple rounds of negotiations, two international debt regimes -- the Egyptian Caisse de la Dette Publique and the Ottoman Public Debt Administration -- were charged with securing the arrears and restoring the states' credit. A comparison of the states' finances shows that despite being in worse financial shape, the Ottoman Empire secured far better terms for settling its bankruptcy than did Egypt. Despite the attention historians have paid to the bankruptcies, this riddle has yet to be explained. Although the bankruptcies were contemporaneous and shared much in common, they have not been compared. Meanwhile, those who have studied the bankruptcies separately, have drawn similar conclusions: the two debt regimes are depicted as archetypes of late-19th century economic imperialism, fashioned according to the geostrategic interests of the Great Powers. Based on archival sources in London, Paris and Berlin these studies take for granted and reinforce the notion that factors at the core of the world economy dictate events at its periphery. But an entirely new picture emerges when the stories of the bankruptcies are told together and from the perspective of the periphery. Drawing on research in the Egyptian National Archives (Dar al-Wathaiq) and the Ottoman archives (Osmanl Basbakanlik Arsivi), this paper argues that the administrative, financial, and diplomatic resources that Ottoman and Egyptian officials brought to bear on the negotiations were critical to shaping their outcomes. By drawing from the theoretical work on organization, public management and bureaucracy, I explain how Ottoman negotiators were better positioned to resist initial European demands, secure concessions from their creditors, and lay a more secure foundation for future economic growth than their Egyptian counterparts.