International ecoomic relations of the Western World, 1959 -1971

Volume 2 : International monetary relations

Susan Strange has written a history of international monetary relations that tries to look behind the events at the political considerations, domestic and international, and the economic notions, old and new, that guided governments as they tried to make an international monetary system of convertible currencies work smoothly in the service of rapidly expanding world trade and business.

At the start of the 1960s, international monetary matters were still relatively low politics' in international relations: by 1971, when this account ends, they were generally acknowledged to be 'high politics, vitally affecting the relationship between the United States and its associates, and of both with all the countries unrepresented in what the author calls the 'affluent alliance' which took the key decisions. How and why this change came about, what states were involved in the affluent alliance and what roles they played, whether the ideas and theories of economists or the forces of the money markets had most influence on their policies - these are some of the questions which the study tries to answer.

An additional section by Christopher Prout analyses the ways in which the developed countries managed, or failed to manage, their monetary relations with the poor countries to whom they gave aid and credit and whose debts they sometimes had to reschedule.