The multiple contexts of Bretton woods

This paper examines why so much debate about the structure of the international economy revolves around a conference held at Bretton Woods in July 1944 which was not immediately conspicuously successful. There was a unique confluence of contemporary contexts-in terms of trade policy, stabilization policy, and policies with regard to capital movements-that meant that prevailing ideas (especially the ideas of John Maynard Keynes) and the interests of the United States coincided. It was fundamentally a victory of the United States, but dressed up as benign multilateralism. A similarly unique combination of circumstances surrounded European efforts in the 1970s and was later to create, through the European Monetary System, a scaled-down version of Bretton Woods. The myth of Bretton Woods was created by a powerful retrospective interpretation or retrospective context that lent a golden halo to the whole exercise. In that sense our interpretation of a very specific historical event is inseparably intertwined with views of what happened after as well as before that event.