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The 1949 sterling crisis and British policy towards European integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 1985

Scott Newton
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Extract

Most commentators on the 1949 sterling crisis have viewed it as an episode with implications merely for the management of the British economy. This paper, based on the public records now available, discusses the impact of the crisis on British economic foreign policy. In particular it suggests that the crisis revealed deep Anglo-American differences, centring on the nature of the Marshall Plan, on the international value of the sterling area, and on the proper relationship between the United Kingdom and Western Europe, Ultimately the British succeeded in resolving these disagreements: but this triumph ironically implied both the defeat of British aims in post-war European reconstruction and a long term delusion that great power status could be maintained on the basis of a special relationship-with the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , July 1985 , pp. 169 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1985

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References

1. See for example Alec Caimcross, ‘The 1949 Devaluation of Sterling’, in Cairncross, Alec and Eichengreen, Barry, Sterling in Decline: the Devaluations of 1949 and 1967 (Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar

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7. See Newton, C. C. S., ‘Britain, the Dollar Shortage, and European Integration, 1945–1950’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1982, chapter VI.Google Scholar

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23. For a more detailed discussion of American attempts to liberalize European payments arrangements in 1949 see Newton, C. C. S., ‘Britain, the Dollar Shortage, and European Integration’, pp. 248–59.Google Scholar

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28. For records of the Cripps–Snyder meetings see PRO FO 371/7559, passim.

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40. PRO CAB 129/37, CP (49) 203, joint memorandum by Bevin and Cripps, ‘Proposals for the Economic Unification of Europe’.

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46. See Newton, C. C. S., ‘The Sterling Crisis of 1947 and the British Response to the Marshall Plan’, Economic History Review, 08 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47. See Strange, Susan, Sterling and British Policy (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar