"Forgotten Foundations is classic interdisciplinary history, drawing on literatures from political science and economics as well as primary sources.... Helleiner has made an important contribution that will permanently re-frame how scholars conceptualize Bretton Woods."― Journal of Interdisciplinary History Eric Helleiner’s new book provides a powerful corrective to conventional accounts of the negotiations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. These negotiations resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—the key international financial institutions of the postwar global economic order. Critics of Bretton Woods have argued that its architects devoted little attention to international development issues or the concerns of poorer countries. On the basis of extensive historical research and access to new archival sources, Helleiner challenges these assumptions, providing a major reinterpretation that will interest all those concerned with the politics and history of the global economy, North-South relations, and international development. The Bretton Woods architects—who included many officials and analysts from poorer regions of the world—discussed innovative proposals that anticipated more contemporary debates about how to reconcile the existing liberal global economic order with the development aspirations of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil. Alongside the much-studied Anglo-American relationship was an overlooked but pioneering North-South dialogue. Helleiner’s unconventional history brings to light not only these forgotten foundations of the Bretton Woods system but also their subsequent neglect after World War II.

Eric Helleiner's new book provides a powerful corrective to conventional accounts of the negotiations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. These negotiations resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—the key international financial institutions of the postwar global economic order. Critics of Bretton Woods have argued that its architects devoted little attention to international development issues or the concerns of poorer countries. On the basis of extensive historical research and access to new archival sources, Helleiner challenges these assumptions, providing a major reinterpretation that will interest all those concerned with the politics and history of the global economy, North-South relations, and international development. The Bretton Woods architects—who included many officials and analysts from poorer regions of the world—discussed innovative proposals that anticipated more contemporary debates about how to reconcile the existing liberal global economic order with the development aspirations of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil. Alongside the much-studied Anglo-American relationship was an overlooked but pioneering North-South dialogue. Helleiner’s unconventional history brings to light not only these forgotten foundations of the Bretton Woods system but also their subsequent neglect after World War II.

Most accounts explain the postwar globalization of financial markets as a product of unstoppable technological and market forces. Drawing on extensive historical research, Eric Helleiner provides the first comprehensive political history of the phenomenon, one that details and explains the central role played by states in permitting and encouraging financial globalization.Helleiner begins by highlighting the commitment of advanced industrial states to a restrictive international financial order at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference and during the early postwar years. He then explains the growing political support for the globalization of financial markets after the late 1950s by analyzing five sets of episodes: the creation of the Euromarket in the 1960s, the rejection in the early 1970s of proposals to reregulate global financial markets, four aborted initiatives in the late 1970s and early 1980s to implement effective controls on financial movements, the extensive liberalization of capital controls in the 1980s, and the containment of international financial crises at three critical junctures in the 1970s and 1980s.He shows that these developments resulted from various factors, including the unique hegemonic interests of the United States and Britain in finance, a competitive deregulation dynamic, ideological shifts, and the construction of a crisis-prevention regime among leading central bankers. In his conclusion Helleiner addresses the question of why states have increasingly embraced an open, liberal international financial order in an era of considerable trade protectionism.

At a time when critiques of free trade policies are gaining currency, The Neomercantilists helps make sense of the protectionist turn, providing the first intellectual history of the genealogy of neomercantilism. Eric Helleiner identifies many pioneers of this ideology between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries who backed strategic protectionism and other forms of government economic activism to promote state wealth and power. They included not just the famous Friedrich List, but also numerous lesser-known thinkers, many of whom came from outside of the West. Helleiner's novel emphasis on neomercantilism's diverse origins challenges traditional Western-centric understandings of its history. It illuminates neglected local intellectual traditions and international flows of ideas that gave rise to distinctive varieties of the ideology around the globe, including in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. This rich history left enduring intellectual legacies, including in the two dominant powers of the contemporary world economy: China and the United States. The result is an exceptional study of a set of profoundly influential economic ideas. While rooted in the past, it sheds light on the present moment. The Neomercantilists shows how we might construct more global approaches to the study of international political economy and intellectual history, devoting attention to thinkers from across the world, and to the cross-border circulation of thought.

Commentaries by top scholars alongside the most important documents and speeches concerning the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 The two world wars brought an end to a long†‘standing system of international commerce based on the gold standard. After the First World War, the weaknesses in the gold standard contributed to hyperinflation, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and ultimately World War II. The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 arose out of the Allies’ desire to design a postwar international economic system that would provide a basis for prosperity, trade, and worldwide economic development. Alongside important documents and speeches concerning the adoption and evolution of the Bretton Woods system, this volume includes lively, readable, original essays on such topics as why the gold standard was doomed, how Bretton Woods encouraged the adoption of Keynesian economics, how the agreements influenced late†‘twentieth†‘century ideas of international development, and why the agreements ultimately had to give way to other arrangements.

As an economic superpower, China has become an increasingly important player in the international monetary system. Its foreign exchange reserves are the largest in the world and its exchange rate policy has become a major subject of international economic diplomacy. The internationalization of the renminbi (RMB) raises critical questions in international policy circles: What kinds of power is China acquiring in international monetary relations? What are the priorities of the Chinese government? What explains its preferences? In The Great Wall of Money, a distinguished group of contributors addresses these questions from distinct perspectives, revealing the extent to which China’s choices, and global monetary affairs, will be shaped by internal political factors and affect world politics. The RMB is a likely competitor for the dollar in the next couple of decades; its emergence as an important international currency would have substantial effects on the balance of power between the United States and China. By illuminating the politics of China’s international monetary relations, this book provides a timely account of the global economy, the role of the renminbi in international relations, and the trajectory of China’s continuing ascendency in the coming decades.

This book repositions the groundbreaking Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 as the first large-scale multilateral North-South dialogue on global financial governance. It moves beyond the usual focus on Anglo-American interests by highlighting the influence of delegations from Latin America, India, the Soviet Union, France, and others. It also investigates how state and private interests intermingled, collided, and compromised during the negotiations on the way to a set of regulations and institutions that still partly frame global economic governance in the early twenty-first century. Together, these essays lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive analysis of Bretton Woods as a pivotal site of multilateralism in international history.