The Economic Consequences of the Peace

28 Sep, 2023 330 Economics

In an extended version of the broadcast programme, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential book John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1919 after he resigned in protest from his role at the Paris Peace Conference. There the victors of World War One were deciding the fate of the defeated, especially Germany and Austria-Hungary, and Keynes wanted the world to know his view that the economic consequences would be disastrous for all. Soon Germany used his book to support their claim that the Treaty was grossly unfair, a sentiment that fed into British appeasement in the 1930s and has since prompted debate over whether Keynes had only warned of disaster or somehow contributed to it.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Margaret MacMillan No other episodes
    Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford
  • Michael Cox No other episodes
    Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Founding Director of LSE IDEAS
  • Patricia Clavin No other episodes
    Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford

Reading list

  • The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years
    Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1998) Google Books →
  • The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
    Zachary D. Carter (Random House, 2020) Google Books →
  • Keynes: The Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist
    Peter Clarke (Bloomsbury, 2009) Google Books →
  • Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace after 100 Years: Polemics and Policy
    Patricia Clavin et al (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
  • Britain and the Making of Global Order after 1919: The Ben Pimlott Memorial Lecture
    Patricia Clavin (Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 31:3, 2020)
  • Universal Man; The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes
    Richard Davenport-Hines (William Collins, 2015) Google Books →
  • John Maynard Keynes
    R. F. Harrod (Pelican, first published 1951; 1972) Google Books →
  • Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace: A Reappraisal
    Jens Holscher and Matthias Klaes (eds) (Pickering & Chatto, 2014) Google Books →
  • The Economic Consequences of the Peace
    John Maynard Keynes (with an introduction by Michael Cox) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Google Books →
  • Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World
    Margaret MacMillan (John Murray Publishers, 2001)
  • The Carthaginian Peace or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes
    Etienne Mantoux (Oxford University Press, 1946) Google Books →
  • Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography
    D. E. Moggridge (Routledge, 1992) Google Books →
  • Versailles 1919: A Centennial Perspective
    Alan Sharp (Haus Publishing Ltd, 2018) Google Books →
  • John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946
    Robert Skidelsky (Pan Macmillan, 2004) Google Books →
  • A Perfidious Distortion of History: The Versailles Peace Treaty and the Success of the Nazis
    Jurgen Tampke (Scribe UK, 2017) Google Books →
  • The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
    Adam Tooze (Penguin Books, 2015) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m001qtpf

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qtpf

Auto-category: 330.9 (Economic history and systems)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. In 1919, John Maynard Keynes quit his job at the Paris Peace Conference where the victors of World War One were deciding the fate of the defeated.