Since the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (known today as the World Bank) at the Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944, they have played a central role in the international economy. While scholars have depicted the Bretton Woods Conference as the almost exclusive result of bilateral negotiations between the United States and Britain, Eric Helleiner's new book highlights the so far understudied role of poorer countries, thereby offering a major reinterpretation of the origins of the postwar economic order. ‘Forgotten Foundations’ focuses mainly on two issues: 1. the largely overlooked north-south dimensions of the Bretton Woods negotiations, 2. the origins and centrality of the development agenda not only to Latin American, Asian, African, and Eastern European founding members of the IBRD, but also to their main architects, the United States and Britain. These two interrelated issues constitute ‘the forgotten foundations of Bretton Woods’.
Drawing on impressive archival research in the United States and Britain, Helleiner describes how US officials (as well as several British economists) learnt from their counterparts in poorer regions and incorporated (part) of their ideas into the Bretton Woods proposals. By arguing that peripheral countries had a significant impact on the IBRD's original agenda, Helleiner seeks to correct partial, if not mistaken, accounts of the planning process. The study of African, Asian, Eastern European, and Latin American participation in the Bretton Woods process in one single book is innovative and of great value.
The book is organised chronologically and regionally. In Chapters 1 and 2, Helleiner argues that while existing historiography locates the birth of international development in President Truman's speech of 1949 or the 1942–4 Bretton Woods's negotiations, its roots are to be found in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Good Neighbour policy. By examining the United States’ financial mission to Cuba in 1941–2, Chapter 3 explains the transformation of US financial advisory activities in Latin America under the Good Neighbour policy. It shows that through the missions’ activities, US officials became more sympathetic to the concerns of Latin American policy-makers regarding industrialisation, development and debt default. In fact, Helleiner rightly points to the high degree of continuity between Roosevelt's strengthening of the Good Neighbour policy initiated by Herbert Hoover and the United States’ transition from isolationism to internationalism and multilateralism.
Chapter 4, which is central to Helleiner's argument, explores the postwar planning that started when the United States entered the war, in December 1941. By closely following the evolution of Harry D. White's proposals for an international fund and bank, Helleiner argues that, contrary to widespread narratives that maintain that the US planners were not interested in the concerns of southern governments, they actually prioritised development issues that had emerged from Latin American preferences in the inter-American context of the 1930s.
Chapter 5 examines two successful US financial missions to Paraguay in 1943–4 and highlights the role played by the head of the mission, Robert Triffin (from the Federal Reserve Board). By referring to the professional and personal ties that Triffin established with Raúl Prebisch and Herman Max, this revealing chapter highlights the personal dimension of the planning process and its intersection with the ‘high-politics’ of Bretton Woods.
Chapter 6 aspires to demonstrate a key argument of the book, namely, that Washington and London took into consideration Latin America's development aspirations while designing the Bretton Woods institutions. In order to do so, it examines Latin America's participation in early multilateral consultations. It maintains that ‘US officials made clear to Keynes as early as 1941 that they considered Latin American countries to be important partners in the development of postwar plans’ (p. 157). This argument challenges prevalent explanations according to which Washington informed London of its determination to include Latin American republics in the planning process but not necessarily because it was genuinely interested in the region's input. Several scholars identify a growing tension between the United States and Britain over the number of friendly nations that each of them could invite to consultations, as both countries sought to reach a majority of votes in order to protect their own interests.
Notwithstanding these important insights, I am afraid that certain aspects of Latin America's participation in the conference do not receive sufficient attention in the relevant chapters. For instance, Helleiner mentions only in passing that Argentina, one of the most powerful Latin American countries at the time, was not invited to consultations in Washington (p. 158). Several scholars, such as Raúl García Heras and myself, have analysed Washington's strong determination to keep Argentina as the only Latin American republic excluded from Bretton Woods. The examination of Argentina's case challenges the notion that the United States was ready to take into account Latin America's needs and interests while planning the fund and bank. In the same manner, Helleiner mentions that Cuban and Mexican delegates worked closely with US officials at the conference (pp. 160–1). However, there is no mention of their close and special relations with the United States. Undoubtedly, Latin American responses to the Bretton Woods initiative, as well as the US motivation to include them as more than formal partners in the process, were influenced by the degree of proximity or enmity between each nation and Washington.
Chapter 8 illuminates John M. Keynes’ stand on development and international lending. Chapters 7 and 9 provide an interesting examination of the expectations from, and unequal impact of, China, the Philippines, Eastern Europe and India in the planning process. Helleiner stresses that China and Latin America shared a genuine concern over development and supported the US initiative from the start. Nevertheless, in 1943 the Chinese minister of economy stated, ‘neither plan gives sufficient consideration to the development of industrially weak nations’ (quoted on p. 192).
Helleiner's revisionist approach constitutes a substantial contribution to the study of the foundations of the postwar economic order. ‘Forgotten Foundations’ seeks to demonstrate Latin America's agency in the design of the Bretton Woods system. However, Latin America hardly speaks for itself in the book. We look at the region mainly through US eyes. The research does not include Latin American Archives (except one in Brazil). The absence of Latin American primary sources is particularly felt in the chapters on the US missions to Cuba and Paraguay. The same applies to the lack of secondary sources produced by Latin American scholars (some of them available in English). Primary and secondary sources from Latin America could have provided much-needed information on US-Latin American relations at the time and could have contributed to reconstruct more fully the history of the events from the perspective of all protagonists.
To conclude, ‘Forgotten Foundations’ is, no doubt, an innovative and provocative book that those interested in the origins of the current global order should read. Like Helleiner's previous works, it would surely serve as an essential point of reference for any further discussion on this crucial issue.
