Resolving the Paradox of the Monnet Plan: National and International Planning in French Reconstruction

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the origins of the first French plan for reconstructing and modernizing the economy, usually referred to in the literature as the Monnet Plan. The plan was one of national reconstruction to prepare the French economy for participation in the open international economy envisaged at Bretton Woods in I944. The plan has been studied exclusively in terms of its domestic economic objectives, yet by drawing upon a wide range of hitherto unused archival material it is clear that the plan also had very definite foreign economic objectives.1 Indeed, through the plan the French government hoped to shape the international environment, or more specifically the European environment in accordance with its political and economic objectives. These were to reconstruct and modernize French heavy industry in order to increase its strength relative to that of Germany. In fact, Jean Monnet succeeded in winning widespread support for his plan within the French Administration in I946 support which had been lacking for all previous plans owing to the backing and initial suggestion of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (hereafter referred to as the Quai d'Orsay). The plan was to demonstrate in economic terms the French economy's dependence on the resources of the Ruhr in order to win Allied acceptance of French proposals to establish international control of the Ruhr. Vital imports of coal, coking coal, and coke oven coke, on which the French economy depended, were to strengthen the French steel industry, and in particular to enable French goods to replace those of Germany in Germany and in markets formerly supplied by Germany. It was only when these foreign policy imperatives were superimposed on domestic economic imperatives that a single plan could be agreed upon and elaborated.