Golden Fetters Revisited

Abstract

The following sections deal with one of the most explored topics in the study of economic history: the shortage of gold, and the international struggle for it, which in the interwar period led cooperation between countries to become weaker and increasingly bilateral, as domestic concerns were prioritized. One relevant question is whether a close examination of these developments might lead us to challenge the widely accepted notion that national sovereignty and international cooperation are complementary. In the debate on the gold standard, our particular focus will be on how the ‘arithmetic’ of the standard worked in the turbulent years that followed the First World War.