The Multiple Contexts of Bretton Woods

Abstract

This paper examines why so much debate about the structure of the international economy revolves around a conference held at Bretton Woods in July 1944 which was not immediately conspicuously successful. There was a unique confluence of contemporary contexts—in terms of trade policy, stabilization policy, and policies with regard to capital movements—that meant that prevailing ideas (especially the ideas of John Maynard Keynes) and the interests of the United States coincided. It was fundamentally a victory of the United States, but dressed up as benign multilateralism. The myth of Bretton Woods was also created by a powerful retrospective interpretation or retrospective context that lent a golden halo to the whole exercise. In that sense our interpretation of a very specific historical event is inseparably intertwined with views of what happened after as well as before that event. Bretton Woods has become a powerful myth. It is the only instantly recognizable location of the series of conferences of the wartime coalition (the United Nations) held shortly before and after the end of the Second World War. Hot Springs (the conference in May and June 1943 that discussed food and agriculture), Dumbarton Oaks (the meetings that sketched out a future international organization from August to October 1944) are easily forgotten; even the San Francisco conference (April–June 1945) that established the post-war United Nations system is scarcely identifiable to any but the expert in United Nations history. By contrast, the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, held in July 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, is still instantly recognizable as a view of the world.