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In Our Time: History

The Economic Consequences of the Peace

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.43.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2023

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

0:05.0

This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes

0:09.9

you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website.

0:13.2

If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it.

0:17.4

I hope you enjoyed the programme.

0:19.2

Hello, in 1919 John Maynard Cain's quit his job at the Paris Peace Conference, where

0:24.8

the victors of World War I were deciding the fate of the defeated.

0:28.6

Immediately Cain's wrote the economic consequences of the peace.

0:32.8

His warning of why, in his view, the Treaty of Versailles would be disastrous.

0:37.4

And soon Germany used this book as proof that the treaty was grossly unfair, a sentiment

0:42.8

that fed into British abysment in the 1930s, and a since spawned debate over whether

0:47.4

Cain's had only warned of disaster, or somehow contributed to it.

0:51.8

With me to discuss Cain's the economic consequences of the peace, a Patricia Claven, Professor

0:56.6

of Modern History at the University of Oxford, Michael Cox, Emeritus Professor of International

1:01.6

Relations at the London School of Economics, and founding director of the LSE Ideas, and

1:06.9

Margaret McMillan, Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford.

1:12.2

Margaret McMillan, how had World War I come to an end?

1:17.0

It came to an end with an armistice.

1:19.4

Germany was the central power, and its allies were falling away, and on the battlefield

1:26.0

the German troops couldn't go on.

1:27.9

And so the German government, at the urging of the German High Command, asked President

1:32.5

Woodrow Wilson to arrange an armistice, it was, in fact, a surrender.

...

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