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7 - In the Name of Social Stability: The European Payments Union

from Money and Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2023

By
Jorrit Steehouder
Edited by
Mathieu Segers  and
Steven Van Hecke
Mathieu Segers
Affiliation:
Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
Steven Van Hecke
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
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Summary

In October 1949, the Belgian-American economist Robert Triffin recalled the signing of the Bretton Woods Agreements of July 1944. From a luxurious hotel in the secluded forests of New Hampshire, the world had aimed to stabilise the international economic system by creating a new rules-based global monetary order. At the time, the financial experts of continental Europe had little to say in bringing about this new order, which was predominantly of Anglo-American design. In a parallel effort to the Anglo-American financial experts, most notably John Maynard Keynes and Harry D. White, Europe’s leaders envisioned the post-war monetary system differently. They deliberated ‘regional monetary groups’ that should tie in with a ‘skeleton world council’ in the form of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the European Union , pp. 209 - 233
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Recommended Reading

Beyen, J. W. Money in a Maelstrom (New York, NY, Macmillan, 1949).Google Scholar
Clavin, P. Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maier, C. S. In Search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Milward, A. S. The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–51 (London, Methuen & Co., 1984).Google Scholar
Patel, K. K. Project Europe: A History (Cambridge and New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2020).Google Scholar
Segers, M. L. L. ‘Eclipsing Atlantis: Trans‐Atlantic Multilateralism in Trade and Monetary Affairs as a Pre‐history to the Genesis of Social Market Europe (1942–1950)’, Journal of Common Market Studies 57, no. 1 (2019): 60–76.Google Scholar
Van Zeeland, P. A View of Europe, 1932: An Interpretative Essay on Some Workings of Economic Nationalism (Baltimore, MD, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933).Google Scholar

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