International ecoomic relations of the Western World, 1959 -1971 vol.1
- London Published for the Royal Institute of InternationalAffairs by 1976
- 416 p.
Volume 1 : Politics and trade
At the end of 1958 the era of post-war reconstruction and recovery formally ended, and the national currencies of the main countries of the Western world were once again made freely convertible into US dollars. From that moment onwards the network of transactions and economic relationships already well established among the group of Western nations, grew and ramified at a tremendous pace. These nations discovered that they were tied in together and dependent on one another for the efficient conduct of their domestic economic affairs to an extent that they had never experienced before. Moreover this mutual dependence constantly and visibly increased.
The present study, in two volumes, traces the uneven progress in the realization of the new facts of inter national life; the accompanying changes in the econ omic balance of power between the United States and the other capitalist countries; the accords and the conflicts, leading up to the great dollar crisis of 1971, The latter year, when the dollar was itself declared inconvertible by the American government, marks the end of an epoch. The underlying question which is explored by the authors is how far the rules and conventions of the new economic system had established themselves on a durable basis which stood a chance of lasting into the 1970s and 1980s.
Vol. 1 contains, in addition to an overview of the politics of international economic relations by Andrew Shonfield, the editor of the two volumes, a survey of international trade policies centred on the GATT by Gerard and Victoria Curzon, and a critical examination by T.K. Warley of the efforts to bring the agricultural trade of these nations under inter national control. It concludes with a short essay by George Ray on the effects of the internationalization of the professional work of statisticians and econ omists on the whole process, Vol. 2, by Susanı Strange, deals with international finance from the convertibility of European currencies in 1959 the inconvertibility of the dollar in 1971.