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8 - The End of Bretton Woods: Origins and European Consequences

from Market, Society and Security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2023

By
Martin Daunton
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 July 1944, delegations from forty-five nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods to devise a monetary regime for the post-war world that aimed to replace the currency warfare of the 1930s and to provide a firm basis for the restoration of a multilateral world economy. Between 1971 and 1973, this system fell apart – and during the fruitless attempts at reform, the European Economic Community (EEC) took initial steps to move from the customs union and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to monetary union. This shift in priorities is usually explained as an internal European process, but this chapter indicates that it needs to be understood within a wider context of the design flaws of the Bretton Woods system, failed reform by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and growing European criticism of the American response.

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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the European Union , pp. 209 - 234
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Recommended Reading

Dyson, K. and Maes, I. (eds.). Architects of the Euro: Intellectuals in the Making of the European Monetary Union (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garten, J. E. Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy (New York, NY, Harper, 2021).Google Scholar
Gray, W. G. ‘Floating the System: Germany, the United States, and the Breakdown of Bretton Woods, 1969–1973’, Diplomatic History 31 (2007): 295–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, H. International Monetary Cooperation since Bretton Woods (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Matusow, A. J. Nixon’s Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars and Votes (Lawrence, KS, University Press of Kansas, 1998).Google Scholar
Mourlon-Druol, E. A Europe Made of Money: The Emergence of the European Monetary System(Ithaca, NY and London, Cornell University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schenk, C. R. The Decline of Sterling: Managing the Retreat of an International Currency, 1945–1992 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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