Between Cambridge, Paris, and Amsterdam

doi:10.1017/9781009407540.008

6 - Between Cambridge, Paris, and Amsterdam

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 December 2023

Harold James and

Edited by

Maurice Obstfeld and

Patricia Clavin: Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Giancarlo Corsetti: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Maurice Obstfeld: Affiliation:
Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC
Adam Tooze: Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This chapter examines different styles and contents of attempts to revise the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference. It contrasts the devastating critique of the Economic Consequences, with specific proposals with which Keynes was involved that began in November 1919 with meetings in Amsterdam hosted by the Dutch banker Gerard Vissering, and involving a wide range of international bankers, including some influential Americans. The Amsterdam meeting suggested a plan for leveraging private U.S. finance for the sustainable reconstruction of Europe that anticipated some aspects of the 1924 Dawes Plan. Keynes found his role in the Amsterdam plan undermined by the notoriety of the Economic Consequences and the disapprobrium it attracted. How could he hope to persuade the U.S. government after the attack on Woodrow Wilson mounted in the Economic Consequences? There is a sharp contrast – even contradiction – between the Cambridge world of sharp analysis and polemic and the Amsterdam approach, where market-oriented people tried to devise a solution using financial products/financial engineering. And each of these approaches was also quite different from the diplomatic logic that had produced the Versailles Treaty.

Keywords

reparations diplomacy Paris Peace Conference securitization economic polemic

Type: Chapter
Information: Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace after 100 Years
Polemics and Policy
, pp. 154 - 178

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009407540.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, J. (1919). Meeting the Credit Needs of Europe. Banker’s Magazine, August 1919.Google Scholar

Blyth, M. (2013). Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Bresciani-Turroni, C. (1937). The Economics of Inflation: A Study of Currency Depreciation in Post-War Germany. Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar

Brewer, H.P. (1976). Eastern Money and Western Mortgages in the 1870s, The Business History Review, 50/3, 356–380.Google Scholar

Costigliola, F. (1976). The United States and the Reconstruction of Germany in the 1920s, The Business History Review, 50/4, 477–502.CrossRef Google Scholar

Day, C. (1920). Keynes’sEconomic Consequences of the Peace, The American Economic Review, 10/2, 299–312.Google Scholar

De Vries, J. (1989). Vissering, Gerard (1865–1937), in, Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland. www.historici.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BWN/lemmata/bwn3/vissering Google Scholar

Elliott, L. (2012). Angela Merkel Has the Whip Hand in an Orgy of Austerity, The Guardian, January 12, 2012, www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2012/jan/08/eurozone-crisis-angela-merkel-whip-hand Google Scholar

Fisk, H. (1924). The Inter-Ally Debts: An Analysis of War and Post-war Public Finance, 1914–1923. Bankers Trust Company.Google Scholar

Frederiksen, D.M. (1894). Mortgage Banking in America, Journal of Political Economy, 2/2, 203–234.Google Scholar

Harrison, A. (1920). The Work of Old Men, The English Review, 30 (January 1920), 79–90.Google Scholar

James, H. (2016). Das Reichswirtschaftsministerium und die Aussenwirtschaftspolitik: “Wir deutschen Pleitokraten, wir sitzen und beraten.” In Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig ed., Das Reichswirtschaftsministerium der Weimarer Republik und Seine Vorläufer, De Gruyter, 517–578.Google Scholar

Keynes, J.M. (1919). The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Macmillan.Google Scholar

Keynes, J.M. (1978). The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. In Johnson, Elizabeth, Moggridge, Donald eds., Activities 1920–1922: Treaty Revision and Reconstruction, vol. 17. Royal Economic Society.Google Scholar

Kindleberger, C.P. (1973). The World in Depression 1929–1939. Allen Lane.Google Scholar

Krugman, P. (2013). The Intellectual Contradictions of Sado-Monetarism, The New York Times blog April 8, 2012.Google Scholar

Levy, J. (2012). Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Marks, S. (1978). The Myths of Reparations. Central European History, 11/3, 231–255.Google Scholar

Marks, S. (1998). Smoke and Mirrors. In Smoke-Filled Rooms and the Galerie des Glaces. In Boemeke, M.. Feldman, G. and Glaser, E. eds., The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years. Cambridge University Press, 337–370.Google Scholar

Miller, M. and Skidelsky, R. (2012). How Keynes Would Solve the Eurozone Crisis, The Financial Times, 16 May 2012.Google Scholar

Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action; Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Péteri, G. (1992). Central Bank Diplomacy: Montagu Norman and Central Europe’ Monetary Reconstruction after World War I, Contemporary European History, 1/3, 233–258.CrossRef Google Scholar

Phelps, C. (1927). The Foreign Expansion of American Banks: American Branch Banking Abroad. The Ronald Press Company.Google Scholar

Rosenberg, E.S. (2003). Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Schuker, S.A. (1976). The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan. The University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar

Schuker, S.A. (1988). American “Reparations” to Germany, 1919–33: Implications for the Third-World Debt Crisis. International Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton University.Google Scholar

Skidelsky, R. (1983). John Maynard Keynes Volume One: Hopes Betrayed 1883–1920. Macmillan.Google Scholar

Skidelsky, R. (1992). John Maynard Keynes Volume Two: The Economist as Saviour 1920–1937. Macmillan.Google Scholar

Skidelsky, R. (2010). Keynes: The Return of the Master. Penguin.Google Scholar

Snowden, K.A. (2010). Covered Farm Mortgage Bonds in the Late Nineteenth Century U.S. NBER Working Paper No. 16242.Google Scholar

Stiglitz, J.E. (2016). The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe. Norton.Google Scholar

Taussig, F.W. (1920). The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 34/2, 381–387.CrossRef Google Scholar

Times (1920). A Critic of the Peace. January 5, 1920, 42299, 17.Google Scholar

Tooze, J.A. (2014). The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order. Viking Penguin.Google Scholar

Trachtenberg, M. (1980). Reparation and World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923. Columbia University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Vogeler, M.S. (2008) Austin Harrison and the English Review. University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar

Warburg, P. (1930). The Federal Reserve System, Its Origin and Growth; Reflections and Recollections. Macmillan.Google Scholar

Wiebe, R. (1959). The House of Morgan and the Executive, 1905–1913, The American Historical Review, 65/1, 49–60.Google Scholar

Book contents

6 - Between Cambridge, Paris, and Amsterdam

Summary

Keywords

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive