The Economic Consequences of the Peace [Paperback]

John Maynard Keynes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 2004

In 1919, Keynes participated in the negotiations of World War I's armistice. He strongly disagreed with terms of reparation imposed on Germany, arguing in this controversial book that German impoverishment would threaten all of Europe. This prophetic view of the European marketplace in the early 20th century represents a much-studied landmark of economic theory.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The Economic Consequences of Peace marked the entrance into the world scene of the twentieth century’s most influential economist. It should be in the library of every serious student of world affairs. —Paul A. Volcker, from his introduction” --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was educated at Eton and at Kings College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1905. After a period in the India Office of the Civil Service, he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in economics. During World War I he held a post at the Treasury and was selected as an economic adviser to the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He resigned that position in June of that year and wrote and published The Economic Consequences of the Peace, in which he argued against the excessive reparations required of Germany. Between the wars he was a financial adviser and a lecturer at Cambridge. His major and most revolutionary work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was published in 1936. Keynes played a central role in British war finance during World War II and, in 1944, was the chief British representative at the Bretton Woods Conference that established the International Monetary Fund. The transformations which Keynes brought about, both in economic theory and policy, were some of the most considerable and influential of the twentieth century, laying, in effect, the foundations for what is now macroeconomics.
Robert Lekachman was a professor of economics at Lehman College, City University of New York, and is the author of The Age of Keynes and Capitalism for Beginners.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications (March 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486434508
• ISBN-13: 978-0486434506
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,761,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Classic Account of the Versailles Peace Treaty, July 18, 2003

By 

Jeffery Steele (Taipei, Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Paperback)

This book gave economist John Maynard Keynes a huge influence on perceptions of the peace treaty signed after World War I -- an influence that has been controversial ever since. Critics still argue over whether Keynes exaggerated the deleterious effects of the treaty on Germany's economy. Some also contend that the account, which was widely read during the 1920s, encouraged both German intransigence to overturning the treaty and Allied acquiescence in allowing it to be overturned -- two key factors in the rise of Hitler and the reconsolidation of German military power before World War II.

Keynes' book remains highly readable in many sections. He was not only a brilliant economist, but a superb writer with a keen eye for the foibles of the great men of his time. However, some sections of the text, such as the one dealing with reparations, are abstruse and less suitable to the modern audience. These are still brilliantly told, but unless you are a grad student or a scholar with a particular interest in the many details of Germany's economy in the early part of the century as well as the demands put on it by the treaty, you are not likely to find these sections as gripping as the others.

The book must be read by those interested in the Versailles Peace Treaty and the aftermath of its signing. Even today, the power of Keynes' argument is evident. I've just recently finished reading Margaret MacMillan's "Paris, 1919," and while I enjoyed the book, I found her arguments against Keynes to be unconvincing. MacMillan says the actual collection of economic claims against Germany was rather modest, less, for example, than Germany collected from France in the aftermath of the 1870 war. But Keynes admitted the allies might not hold Germany to all the economic terms of the treaty. He still felt strongly that many of those terms - whether enforced or not - discouraged sound planning by German investors, companies, and its government, and unnecessarily impoverished the German people. This he felt was bad for not just Germany, but all of Europe.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not this edition!, January 14, 2010

By 

Gary W. Shanafelt (Abilene, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The economic consequences of the peace (Paperback)

Maynard Keynes' Economic Consequences of the Peace has long been recognized as a classic, and it takes on new significance in light of the recent meltdown on Wall Street. But if you want to buy a copy, you should forget this edition. It appears to have been scanned from an earlier copy, but no effort was made to clean up the text after scanning it. As a result, there are whole sections of gibberish, a mix of characters and symbols that makes no sense whatsoever. Much of the book is literally unreadable.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nought remains but vindictiveness among the strong, July 19, 2006

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Paperback)

For Keynes, the Peace Treaty of Paris after World War I was a matter of life and death, of starvation and existence, and the fearful convulsions of a dying civilization.

But the negotiating politicians had absolutely no vision. Clemenceau wanted a Carthaginian peace, President Wilson was essentially a theologian and Lloyd George yielded to national electoral chicane.

The victors had no magnanimity. `The future life of Europe was not their concern; its means of livelihood was not their anxiety. Their preoccupations related to frontiers and nationalities, to imperial aggrandizements, to the future enfeeblement of a strong and dangerous enemy, to revenge and to the shifting of their unbearable financial burden on to the shoulders of the defeated.

But for Keynes, the policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation was abhorrent and detestable: `Nations are not authorized, by religion or natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents or of rulers.'

Keynes had the decency to leave the negotiations from the moment he saw the looming disastrous results.

Keynes brilliantly calculated that Germany could not pay the imposed debt. He foresaw the coming German hyperinflation. He clearly recognized the danger of `a victory of reaction' (the right) in Germany, because it would endanger the security of Europe and the basis of peace.

Eventually that's what happened with all its disastrous consequences for Europe.

His prediction of millions of dead from starvation in Germany didn't occur.

This sometimes rather technical book is still a very worth-while read. His author was a visionary.