The Economic Consequences of the Peace

by John Maynard Keynes, Robert Lekachman (Introduction)

Overview

In 1919, John Maynard Keynes participated in the negotiations of World War I's armistice at the Versailles Peace Conference. A senior Treasury official with the British delegation, Keynes strongly disagreed with terms of reparation imposed on Germany, arguing that German impoverishment would threaten all of Europe. Indeed, the imposition of an economic burden that Germany could not pay led to the dismantling of the European market, famine, social unrest, and, ultimately, to World War II. The Economic Consequences of the Peace became an instant best-seller upon its initial publication, its controversial issues transforming Keynes into an overnight celebrity. Its real impact occurred several years later, when the wisdom of Keynes' reasoning was recognized at the close of World War II. The United States and Great Britain followed his advice and undertook an ambitious rebuilding program that paved the way for a solid democratic base in Germany, Italy, and Japan. In addition to its excellent economic analysis of reparations, this volume presents an insightful analysis of the Versailles conference's Council of Four (Georges Clemenceau of France, Prime Minister Lloyd George of Britain, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy). A prophetic view of the European marketplace in the early twentieth century by a brilliant economist, this volume represents a much-studied landmark of economic theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140188059
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/01/1995
Series:	Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was educated at Eton and at Kings College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1905. After a period in the India Office of the Civil Service, he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in economics. During World War I he held a post at the Treasury and was selected as an economic adviser to the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He resigned that position in June of that year and wrote and published The Economic Consequences of the Peace, in which he argued against the excessive reparations required of Germany. Between the wars he was a financial adviser and a lecturer at Cambridge. His major and most revolutionary work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was published in 1936. Keynes played a central role in British war finance during World War II and, in 1944, was the chief British representative at the Bretton Woods Conference that established the International Monetary Fund. The transformations which Keynes brought about, both in economic theory and policy, were some of the most considerable and influential of the twentieth century, laying, in effect, the foundations for what is now macroeconomics.

Robert Lekachman was a professor of economics at Lehman College, City University of New York, and is the author of The Age of Keynes and Capitalism for Beginners.

Table of Contents

The Economic Consequences of the PeaceIntroduction by Robert Lekachman
Chapter I: Introductory
Chapter II: Europe Before the War
Chapter III: The Conference
Chapter IV: The Peace
Chapter V: Reparation
Chapter VI: Europe After the Treaty
Chapter VII: Remedies

Editorial Reviews

"The most important economic document relating to World War I and its aftermath" —John Kenneth Galbraith

From the Publisher