Money and Trade Wars in Interwar Europe

摘要

Alessandro Roselli, a former central banker and academic, has written a compact book about the monetary system in interwar Europe and how it was managed -or manipulated — by different governments in order to gain advantages for their own country in international competitiveness (trade) or in reducing their international debt burden, or both. The interwar period is conventionally dealt with in two parts. The first part reviews the painstaking reinstatement of the gold (exchange) standard in the 1920s. The second part deals with the collapse of that standard in the wake of the Great Depression, and the breakdown of multilateral trade and financial relations during the 1930s. A third, concluding part surveys the wartime plans for the restoration of trade and international payments in Europe once the hostilities were over. The book devotes some attention to the United Kingdom, France and the United States - the key non-European player - but the developments in and as seen from Germany and Italy are at the centre.