The eye-catching title of this book hides the fact that it is a fairly straightforward account of the origins of the euromarkets in London in the 1960s. The origins of the book lie in a Ph.D. thesis completed some years ago, which in part must account for the fact that there is very little literature cited after 1991 and none after 2001. There is no mention of work by some of the leading economic historians of the postwar international economy—authors such as Bordo, Eichengreen, Harold James, or Toniolo, to name a few. Neither is there anything by the leading international economists of the time—such as Harry Johnson who wrote extensively on the central questions in the area. However, the perspective is not that of economic history or economics but rather a kind of political economy of international relations.

That said, in some ways it is a conventional history of the subject though it is presented in dated clothing that tells of cabals operating secretly to decide what to do with Britain's export surplus. The essence of the story is that “the defining project of Britain's post-war economic policy” (p. 79) was the restoration of sterling's international role. That proved impossible but a gift dropped down from above into Britain's hands—the euromarkets. The Bank of England was the primary actor in the story and it ran the City (the financial sector) and pushed the Treasury (ministry of finance) in its determination to re-establish the Bank of England's and the City's position at the heart of London as the foremost international financial center in the world. If sterling was not in a position to assume its nineteenth-century or even its interwar role, then eurodollars and eurobonds were the means of achieving the restoration of London's financial dominance. The author quotes Van Dormael in calling the eurodollar the most significant monetary development since the banknote.

Gary Burn seeks to find continuity in a story that runs from the nineteenth century through the interwar years and on to the euromarkets. The Bank of England provides much of the continuity in its unchanging beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. But it is hard to tell if they are to be seen as a good or bad influence. The bank is said to be the single repository in Britain of a liberal stance, though it is left open as to whether or not that is a good thing. There are disapproving noises made about their directors such as George Bolton, one of the central figures in the markets: “Once he and his merchant banking chums in the City . . .” (p. 170).

There are useful and interesting reminders along the way of the considerable degree of independence with which the bank operated in spite of having been nationalized in 1946. This is one of the more interesting aspects of the story at least from an economic historian's perspective, though it could have drawn on a large literature on central bank independence. But then an element of confusion is introduced when it is asserted that the bank had, long before nationalization, become a de facto state institution.

For economic historians there is much with which to take issue. For example, the account of the interwar years ignores a great deal of scholarship and presents a distorted picture. According to this account Britain stagnated with millions unemployed and fell further into depression after 1929 and persisted with deflationary policies. In fact Britain grew faster in the interwar period than it had for 40 years, suffered no great depression, enjoyed the fastest upswing in its economy in the 1930s (1932–1937) that it ever had, and followed loose monetary policy in the 1930s with the Bank Rate unchanged at 2 percent from 1932 to 1939 at a time when prices were rising gently. Puzzlingly, it is asserted that after 1951 monetary policy was controlled by the market, that the euromarkets precipitated competition and credit control, that it was completely illogical to deregulate financial markets and try to control the money supply, and most puzzlingly of all that the euromarkets “allowed the City's financiers to issue dollar liabilities and thereby share in the denomination rents and the privilege of seignorage that had that (sic) previously accrued exclusively to the United States” (p. 10). There is further the curious proposition that the eurodollar market shored up Britain's balance-of-payments position. And finally, that Britain had a stroke of geographical luck that allowed it to have an international financial center and that was that it was conveniently placed between two other centers. The world is round.

All of this is a pity because there is good material in the book on the origins of the euromarkets and the accommodating part that the Bank of England played in their development.