Remaking the postwar world economy : Robot and British policy in the 1950s / Peter Burnham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Burnham, Peter, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International finance--History--20th century.

International finance.

History.

Monetary policy--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Monetary policy.

International economic relations.

Great Britain--Foreign economic relations--United States.

Great Britain.

United States--Foreign economic relations--Great Britain.

United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 236 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Summary:

In this book Peter Burnham presents a detailed, archive-based account of key aspects of international monetary relations in the 1950s, focusing specifically on Anglo-American policy surrounding the restoration of sterling convertibility. He revisits many views which have been accepted as orthodoxy in IPE; in particular he points out how the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 and its attendant institutions did not begin to operate seriously until after 1958. At the heart of the book is the claim that, in the midst of economic crisis in February 1952, the British government had a unique opportunity (discussed under the codename Operation Robot) to transform the international political economy through the abolition of the fixed-rate system, the International Monetary Fund and the European Payments Union, and to restructure Britain's domestic economy to tackle longstanding productivity, export and labour-market problems. The book explores the argument that, had Robot been implemented, Britain might have maintained its economic independence and not suffered the slow 'creeping paralysis' that it endured for the next twenty-five years.

Contents:

1 Britain, Bretton Woods and the Crisis of the World Economy, 1945-1951 1

II Bretton Woods and the falsification of the IMF assumptions 5

III The British problem and the 1951 balance of payments crisis 11

IV Dramatis personae 17

2 Emergency Action and the Route to Floating Rate Convertibility 20

I Fleming and Thompson-McCausland on the advantages of a floating rate 23

II Inconvertibility and the problem of cheap sterling 31

III Anglo-American economic relations and dollar aid 34

IV The Conference of Commonwealth Finance Ministers 38

3 Operation Robot: Restructuring the Domestic and the World Economy 41

I Forging the Clarke/Bolton/Rowan alliance 42

II Robot and the domestic economy 49

III Robot and the world economy 53

4 The Battle over Robot 71

I Robot and the Economic Section 72

II Cherwell and the Prime Minister's Statistical Section 74

III The Cabinet decides: 28 and 29 February 78

5 Robot Walks Again 89

I Sterling Union: paving the way for Robot II 90

II Towards the 'new look' Robot 93

III Anglo-French collaboration 98

IV The fate of Robot II 101

6 The Collective Approach to Freer Trade and Currencies 107

I The development of the Collective Approach 108

II The Cherwell/MacDougall plan for an Atlantic Payments Union 112

III The adoption of the Collective Approach 115

IV The Commonwealth Economic Conference 119

7 Anglo-American Negotiations and a New Bank Route to Convertibility 126

I The Epistle to the Americans 127

II The Washington Talks and US foreign economic policy 129

III Towards a depoliticized technical approach to convertibility 137

IV The stand-by credit, the quid pro quo and the Humphrey-Butler talks 143

V 'Operation Governor' and de facto convertibility 146

8 From Suez to Operation Unicorn 155

I The sterling crises of 1956 and 1957 156

II Towards unification: the Treasury/Bank consensus on the move to Stage Two 163

III The politics of Operation Unicorn 168

IV France, Germany and the final act 172

9 Conclusion: Bretton Woods and British Decline 175

I The crisis of the new 'Bretton Woods' system 175

II The relative economic and political decline of Britain in the 1950s 179

III Concluding remarks: Britain, Robot and the remaking of the postwar world economy 183.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-230) and index.

ISBN:

0333557255

OCLC:

51944510