Putting London in Its Place

Randall Woods's volume is not yet another of the many recent books on Anglo-American politics during World War II and the onset of the Cold War. In fact, Woods dismisses political events in thin, short passages.1 His purpose, instead, is to present "a history and analysis of Anglo-American financial and commercial relations" (p. x). Here, he enters less cultivated territory,2 although the furrows cut long ago by Richard N. Gardner are still visible. Woods's theme is the American crusade for what might be called pseudomultilateralism, multilateralism distorted by "nationalists, bureaucratic imperialists, and special interests ... into a machine to enrich America" (p. 398). By the Atlantic Charter of 1941 and Article 7 of the Lend-Lease Agreement of 1942, the Americans forced the British to pledge to break down the imperial system, but they themselves would not agree to lower barriers against imports. Through their management of Lend Lease they kept Britain in poverty. They also prevented it from accumulating needed dollar reserves, refused to underwrite its plans for conversion to a peacetime economy, and abruptly terminated aid at the end of the war. Through the Bretton Woods accords of 1944 they established a system that "ensured United States financial hegemony and rendered Great Britain vulnerable" (p. 240). Finally, in 1946 they extended a loan to Britain only on condition that London accept a ruinous commitment to make sterling convertible within a year. In sum, "the Roosevelt-Truman foreign policy establishment saddled Britain with a flawed multilateralism that helped to bring that country to its knees" (p. 301). Criticism of the Americans for their behavior and of the British for agreeing to go along are Woods's major themes

Charter · Economic history · Economics · Hegemony · Liberian dollar · Multilateralism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Finance · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US