International Financial History in the Twentieth Century: System and Anarchy

The essays in this book examine the long history of the international financial system in terms of the current debate about globalization and its limits. In the nineteenth century, international markets existed without international institutions. In the interwar years, attempts (largely unsuccessful) at designing a genuine international trade and monetary system were made at the same time (coincidentally) that the system collapsed. In the post-1945 era, the intended design effort was infinitely more successful. The development of large international capital markets since the 1960s, however, increasingly frustrated attempts at international control.