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Sectoral conflict and foreign economic policy, 1914–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Jeff Frieden
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Extract

The period from 1914 to 1940 is one of the most crucial and enigmatic in modern world history, and in the history of modern U.S. foreign policy. World War I catapulted the United States into international economic and political leadership, yet in the aftermath of the war, despite grandiose Wilsonian plans, the United States quickly lapsed into relative disregard for events abroad: it did not join the League of Nations, disavowed responsibility for European reconstruction, would not participate openly in many international economic conferences, and restored high levels of tariff protection for the domestic market. Only in the late 1930s and 1940s, after twenty years of bitter battles over foreign policy, did the United States move to center stage of world politics and economics: it built the United Nations and a string of regional alliances, underwrote the rebuilding of Western Europe, almost single-handedly constructed a global monetary and financial system, and led the world in commercial liberalization.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , Winter 1988 , pp. 59 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1988

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References

The author would like to acknowledge the comments and suggestions of Beverly Crawford, Robert Dallek, Amy Davis, Barbara Geddes, Judith Goldstein, Joanne Gowa, Stephan Haggard, John Ikenberry, Robert Jervis, Miles Kahler, Paul Kennedy, Robert Keohane, Charles Kindleberger, Steve Krasner, David Lake, Mike Mastanduno, William McNeil, John Ruggie, Stephen Schuker, Jack Snyder, Arthur Stein, and Richard Sylla.

1. Kindleberger, Charles, The World in Depression 1929–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 297–99Google Scholar. The Carr citation is from his The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919–1930 (London: Macmillan, 1939), p. 234Google Scholar. A popular British satirical history of the 1930s, under the heading “A Bad Thing,” summarized the results of the Great War somewhat more succinctly: “America was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a.” Sellar, Walter and Yeatman, Robert, 1066 And All That (New York: Dutton, 1931), p. 115.Google Scholar

2. Dallek, Robert, The American Style of Foreign Policy (New York: Knopf, 1983)Google Scholar is a good survey of traditional American insularity.

3. The historical literature on the period is so enormous that it is feasible only to cite the most recent important additions. Two review essays and a forum are a good start: Kathleen Burk, “Economic Diplomacy Between the Wars,” Historical Journal 24 (December 1981), pp. 1003–15Google Scholar; Jacobson, Jon, “Is There a New International History of the 1920s?” American Historical Review 88 (06 1983), pp. 617–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maier, Charles, Schuker, Stephen, and Kindleberger, Charles, “The Two Postwar Eras and the Conditions for Stability in Twentieth-Century Western Europe,” American Historical Review 86 (04 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other important works include Denise Artaud, La question des dettes interalliées et la reconstruction de l'Europe (Paris: Champion, 1979)Google Scholar; Costigliola, Frank, Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe 1919–1933 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Hogan, Michael J., Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy, 1918—1928 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Leffler, Melvyn, The Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979)Google Scholar; McNeil, William, American Money and the Weimar Republic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Schuker, Stephen, The End of French Predominance in Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976)Google Scholar; and Silverman, Dan, Reconstructing Europe after the Great War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Many of the leading scholars in the field summarize their views in Gustav, Schmidt, ed., Konstellationen Internationaler Politik 1924–1932 (Bochum, W. Ger.: Studienverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer, 1983).Google Scholar

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8. Opposition to the League was indeed led by a prominent nationalist Massachusetts senator whose adamant insistence on protecting manufactured goods while allowing the free import of inputs was ably captured by “Mr. Dooley,” who noted that “Hinnery Cabin Lodge pleaded f'r freedom f'r th' skins iv cows” in ways that “wud melt th' heart iv th' coldest mannyfacthrer iv button shoes.” Cited in Garraty, John A., Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Knopf, 1953), p. 268Google Scholar; the book contains ample, and somewhat weightier, evidence of Lodge's economic nationalism.

9. Lake, David, “The State and American Trade Strategy in the Pre-Hegemonic Era,”Google Scholar in this volume.

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12. Lewis, Cleona, America's Stake in International Investments (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1938), p. 352Google Scholar. See, for a discussion of the experience, Dayer, Roberta A., “Strange Bedfellows: J. P. Morgan and Co., Whitehall, and the Wilson Administration During World War I,” Business History 18 (07 1976), pp. 127–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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22. On these issues, see the articles by Lamont, Thomas, Sheldon, James, and Rosenthal, Arthur J. in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 88 (03 1920), pp. 114–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. See especially Abrahams, , Foreign Expansion of American FinanceGoogle Scholar; and Costigliola, , “Anglo-American Financial Rivalry,” pp. 914–20Google Scholar. For an interesting view of one aspect of the war debts tangle, see Dayer, Roberta A., “The British War Debts to the United States and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1920–1923,” Pacific Historical Review 45 (11 1976), pp. 569–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Brandes, Joseph, Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), pp. 170–96Google Scholar; Leffler, Melvyn, “The Origins of Republican War Debt Policy, 1921–1923,” Journal of American History 59 (12 1972), pp. 585–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Cited in Silverman, , Reconstructing Europe, pp. 157 and 189.Google Scholar

26. Cited in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Domestic Finance, Federal Reserve Structure and the Development of Monetary Policy, 1915–1935: Staff Report (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1971), p. 62Google Scholar. I am grateful to Jane D'Arista for bringing these and other documents to my attention.

27. Hogan, , Informal Entente, pp. 62–66.Google Scholar

28. See, for example, Clarke, Stephen V. O., Central Bank Cooperation 1924–1931 (New York: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 1967), pp. 46–57Google Scholar, and Dawes, Charles G., A Journal of Reparations (London: Macmillan, 1939), pp. 262–64Google Scholar, for evidence of just how central the bankers were.

29. The agent-general, S. Parker Gilbert, was a close associate of Morgan partner Russell Leffingwell. Costigliola, , “The United States and the Reconstruction of Germany,” pp. 485–94Google Scholar; Feis, , Diplomacy of the Dollar, pp. 40–43Google Scholar; Leffler, , Elusive Quest, pp. 90–112Google Scholar; Neanng, and Freeman, , Dollar Diplomacy, pp. 221–32Google Scholar; Nicolson, , Dwight Morrow, pp. 272–78Google Scholar; Schuker, , French Predominance in Europe, pp. 284–89.Google Scholar

30. For Lamont's optimism, see Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 11 (January 1925), pp. 325–32.Google Scholar

31. Nicolson, , Dwight Morrow, pp. 191–92.Google Scholar

32. Wilson, , American Business, pp. 70–75.Google Scholar

33. Cited in Silverman, , Reconstructing Europe, p. 239.Google Scholar

34. Mary, Maltz Jane, The Many Lives of Otto Kahn (New York: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 204–5Google Scholar. For the similar views of Davis, Norman H., see Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 12 (01 1928), pp. 867–74Google Scholar. See also Wilson, , American Business, pp. 65–100.Google Scholar

35. Hoover is cited in Joseph, Brandes, “Product Diplomacy: Herbert Hoover's Anti-Monopoly Campaign at Home and Abroad,” in Ellis, Hawley, ed., Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1981), p. 193Google Scholar. See also Elliston, H. B., “State Department Supervision of Foreign Loans,” in Howland, Charles P., ed., Survey of American Foreign Relations 1928 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1928) pp. 183–201Google Scholar; Dulles, John Foster, “Our Foreign Loan Policy,” Foreign Affairs 5 (10 1926), pp. 33–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brandes, , Herbert Hoover, pp. 151–96Google Scholar; Feis, , Diplomacy of the Dollar, pp. 7–17Google Scholar; Leffler, , Elusive Quest, pp. 58–64.Google Scholar

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37. These are recalculated from Lewis, , America's Stake, pp. 619–29Google Scholar; her aggregate figures are inexplicably inconsistent.

38. McNeil, , American Money, p. 282.Google Scholar

39. See Meyer, Richard H., Banker's Diplomacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

40. Costigliola, Frank, “The Other Side of Isolationism: The Establishment of the First World Bank, 1929–1930,” Journal of American History 59 (12 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Harold, James, The Reichs bank and Public Finance in Germany 1924–1933 (Frankfurt: Knapp, 1985), pp. 57–94Google Scholar. On BIS attempts at international financial cooperation from 1930 to 1931, see Brown, William A. Jr., The international Gold Standard Reinterpreted, 1914–1934, vol. 2 (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1940), pp. 1035–47Google Scholar. For the views of New York bankers see the articles by Shepard Morgan of Chase and Reynolds, Jackson of the First National Bank of New York in Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 14 (01 1931), pp. 215–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Morgan, Shepard, “Constructive Functions of the International Bank,” Foreign Affairs 9 (07 1931), pp. 580–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an excellent overview of this period, see Clarke, , Central Bank Cooperation.Google Scholar

41. Cited in Leffler, , Elusive Quest, p. 238Google Scholar. On German–American financial relations after 1930, see Harold, James, The German Slump: Politics and Economics 1924–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 398–413.Google Scholar

42. Lewis, , America's Stake, pp. 400–1Google Scholar; Foreign Bondholders Protective Council, Annual Report for 1934 (New York: FBPC, 1934), pp. 218–24.Google Scholar

43. Burner, , Herbert Hoover, p. 298.Google Scholar

44. Falkus, M. E., “United States Economic Policy and the ‘Dollar Gap’ in the 1920s,” Economic History Review 24 (11 1972), pp. 599–623CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that America's enormous balance of trade surplus in the 1920s was due more to the structure and composition of U.S. industry and trade than to trade barriers. Whether this is true or not, the fact remains, as Falkus recognizes, that contemporaries on both sides of the tariff wall perceived U.S. tariffs to be of major significance in limiting European exports.

45. Feis, , Diplomacy of the Dollar, p. 14.Google Scholar

46. These conclusions about American foreign policy in the 1920s differ a bit from those of some of the historians upon whose work my analysis is based. Leffler and Costigliola, especially, stress what they see as the unity of American policy, although both emphasize the importance of domestic constraints on this policy. In my view both scholars, despite their innovations, are too wedded to a modified Open-Door interpretation that overstates the unity and purposiveness of U.S. economic interests, and this methodological overlay colors their conclusions. I believe that the evidence, even as presented by them, warrants my analytical conclusions.

47. Clarke, Stephen V. O., The Reconstruction of the International Monetary System: The Attempts of 1922 and 1933, Princeton Studies in International Finance No. 33 (Princeton, N.J.: International Finance Section, Department of Economics, 1973), pp. 19–39Google Scholar; Moore, James R., “Sources of New Deal Economic Policy: The International Dimension,” Journal of American History 61 (12 1974), pp. 728–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. See especially John, Blum Morton, Roosevelt and Morgenthau (Boston: Houghton Muffin, 1970), pp. 45–53Google Scholar, and Ferguson, , “Normalcy to New Deal,” pp. 82–85Google Scholar. For a sympathetic European view of Roosevelt's policy, see Paul, Einzig, Bankers, Statesmen and Economists (London: Macmillan, 1935), pp. 121–57.Google Scholar

49. See Blum, , Roosevelt and Morgenthau, pp. 40–42Google Scholar, and, for an interesting example, Mitchelman, Irving S., “A Banker in the New Deal: James P. Warburg,” International Review of the History of Banking 8 (1974), pp. 35–59Google Scholar. For an excellent survey of the period, see Romasco, Albert, The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt's New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

50. For details of the Hull–Peek controversy, see Adams, Frederick C., Economic Diplomacy: The Export-Import Bank and American Foreign Policy 1934–1939 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1976), pp. 81–93Google Scholar and Dallek, Robert, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 84–85, 91–93.Google Scholar

51. For a discussion of the impact of crisis on ideologies and institutions, see Judith, Goldstein, “Ideas, Institutions and American Trade Policy,”Google Scholar this volume.

52. Blum, , Roosevelt and Morgenthau, pp. 64–67Google Scholar; Clarke, Stephen V. O., Exchange-Rate Stabilization in the Mid-1930s: Negotiating the Tripartite Agreement, Princeton Studies in International Finance No. 41 (Princeton, N.J.: International Finance Section, Department of Economics, 1977), pp. 8–21.Google Scholar

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54. Harold van, B. Cleveland, “The International Monetary System in the Inter-War Period,” in Benjamin, Rowland, ed., Balance of Power or Hegemony: The Interwar Monetary System (New York: NYU Press, 1976), p. 51Google Scholar. For a lengthier explanation of the ways in which the Tripartite Agreement marked the turning point in the evolution of U.S. economic internationalism, see Charles, Kindleberger, The World in Depression 1929–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 257–61Google Scholar. See also Blum, , Roosevelt and Morgenthau, pp. 76–88Google Scholar; and Clarke, , Exchange-Rate Stabilization, pp. 25–58.Google Scholar

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56. Ruggie, John O., “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 379–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the order that emerged.

57. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 17 (May 1936), p. 113.Google Scholar

58. Feis, Herbert, The Changing Pattern of International Economic Affairs (New York: Harper, 1940), p. 95Google Scholar. Stephen Schuker has, in personal communication, insisted that it was not until 1942 or 1943 that Roosevelt moved away from extreme economic nationalism. He marshals important evidence and convincing arguments to this effect, but the account presented here reflects current scholarly consensus. If, as he has done in the past, Schuker can disprove the conventional wisdom, this analysis of U.S. foreign economic policy in the late 1930s would, of course, need to be revised in the light of new data.

59. See, for example, Krasner, Stephen D., Defending the National Interest (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

60. As, for example, Lake, David A., “International Economic Structures and American Foreign Policy, 1887–1934,” World Politics 35 (07 1983), pp. 517–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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