Étienne Mantoux

Last updated • 5 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Étienne Mantoux (5 February 1913 – 29 April 1945) was a French economist, born in Paris. He was the son of Paul Mantoux. He is probably best known for his book The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes published two years after it was completed and one year after his death. In it, he sought to demonstrate that much of John Maynard Keynes' beliefs about the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles for Germany as expressed in The Economic Consequences of the Peace were wrong.

Contents

In opposition to Keynes he held that justice demanded that Germany should have paid for the whole damage caused by World War I, and he set out to prove that many of Keynes' forecasts were not verified by subsequent events. For example, Keynes believed European output in iron would decrease but by 1929 iron output in Europe was up 10% from the 1913 figure. Keynes predicted that German iron and steel output would decrease but by 1927 steel output increased by 30% and iron output increased by 38% from 1913 (within the pre-war borders). Keynes also argued that German coal mining efficiency would decrease but labour efficiency by 1929 had increased on the 1913 figure by 30%. Keynes contended that Germany would be unable to export coal immediately after the Treaty but German net coal exports were 15 million tons within a year and by 1926 the tonnage exported reached 35 million. He also put forward the claim that German national savings in the years after the Treaty would be less than 2 billion marks: however in 1925 the German national savings figure was estimated at 6.4 billion marks and in 1927 7.6 billion marks. Keynes also believed that Germany would be unable to pay the 2 billion marks-plus in reparations for the next 30 years, but Mantoux contends that German rearmament spending was seven times as much as that figure in each year between 1933 and 1939.

The Canadian economist Jacob Viner called Mantoux's book an "extremely searching criticism" and "detailed economic critique" of Keynes that demonstrated "with the benefit of hindsight" that Keynes' political and economic judgments were unsound. [1] René Albrecht-Carrié agreed with Mantoux's argument that Germany could have paid reparations, although he doubted the political feasibility of extracting them from Germany. He also claimed that Mantoux "ruthlessly exposed" the "loose and fallacious thinking of Keynes and others": "In the light of so much misplaced sentimentalizing as subsequently prevailed, it is well to have it pointed out that to exact reparation is not so much to perpetuate old grievances as to remove existing ones". [2] Michael Heilperin claimed that Mantoux demonstrated that Keynes greatly overestimated the damage done to Germany by the Versailles Treaty and that he had considerably underestimated the capacity of Germany to pay. The experience of the interwar years, according to Heilperin, demonstrated that Keynes had got it wrong. [3] William Rappard said that Mantoux's book was a "very careful, thoughtful, and well-informed refutation of the brilliantly successful but eminently unfair, misleading, and supremely pernicious efforts of Keynes to discredit the peace treaties of 1919" [4] and concluded that Mantoux's book was a "product of the most painstaking scientific craftsmanship and of a political sagacity for which many elder men may well envy its youthful author". [5]

A. J. P. Taylor claimed that Mantoux had "demonstrated that the Germans could have paid reparations, without impoverishment, if they had wanted to do so; and Hitler gave a practical demonstration of this when he extracted vast sums from the Vichy government of France". [6] He also said that The Carthaginian Peace demolished Keynes' thesis. [7] Stephen A. Schuker claimed that Keynes' "tendentious but influential" book was "ably refuted" by Mantoux. [8] Peter Liberman wrote in 1996 that the French view, "that Germany could pay and only lacked the requisite will", has "gained support from recent historical research". [9]

On the other hand, Charles Feinstein criticised Mantoux's argument that the Allies could have collected reparations as the German economy grew and for pointing out the reluctance of the Germans to pay more taxes when they already saw reparations as oppressive and unjust. Feinstein concluded, "The payments were a paramount cause of instability and a barrier to international economic co-operation." [10]

Mantoux was killed in action eight days before Germany unconditionally surrendered on 7 May 1945 whilst fighting with the Free French Forces in Bavaria.[ citation needed ]

Works

Notes

  1. ↑ Jacob Viner, 'The Carthaginian Peace—or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 19, No. 1. (Mar., 1947), p. 69.
  2. ↑ René Albrecht-Carrié, 'The Carthaginian Peace—or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes', Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 2. (Jun., 1953), p. 273.
  3. ↑ Michael A. Heilperin, 'The Carthaginian Peace—or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes', The American Economic Review, Vol. 36, No. 5. (Dec., 1946), p. 932.
  4. ↑ William E. Rappard, 'The Carthaginian Peace—or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes', The American Political Science Review, Vol. 40, No. 5. (Oct., 1946), p. 983.
  5. ↑ Rappard, p. 985.
  6. ↑ A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 70.
  7. ↑ Taylor, p. 344.
  8. ↑ Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe. The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1976), p. 7, n. 6.
  9. ↑ Peter Liberman, Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 89.
  10. ↑ Feinstein, Charles H. (1995). Banking, Currency, and Finance in Europe Between the Wars. Oxford UP. p. 32. ISBN   9780191521669.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treaty of Versailles</span> One of the treaties that ended World War I

The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I, it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied Powers. It was signed in the Palace of Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties. The United States never ratified the Versailles treaty and made a separate peace treaty with Germany. Although the armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. Germany was not allowed to participate in the negotiations—it was forced to sign the final result.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World War I reparations</span> War reparations

Following the ratification of article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of World War I, the Central Powers were made to give war reparations to the Allied Powers. Each of the defeated powers was required to make payments in either cash or kind. Because of the financial situation in Austria, Hungary, and Turkey after the war, few to no reparations were paid and the requirements for reparations were cancelled. Bulgaria, having paid only a fraction of what was required, saw its reparation figure reduced and then cancelled. Historians have recognized the German requirement to pay reparations as the "chief battleground of the post-war era" and "the focus of the power struggle between France and Germany over whether the Versailles Treaty was to be enforced or revised."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Maynard Keynes</span> English economist (1883–1946)

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes was an English economist and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in mathematics, he built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles. One of the most influential economists of the 20th century, he produced writings that are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots. His ideas, reformulated as New Keynesianism, are fundamental to mainstream macroeconomics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Locarno Treaties</span> 1925 territorial settlements between the Allies of WWI and the new European states

The Locarno Treaties were seven agreements negotiated in Locarno, Switzerland, during 5 to 16 October 1925 and formally signed in London on 1 December, in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalising relations with the defeated German Reich. It also stated that Germany would never go to war with the other countries. Locarno divided borders in Europe into two categories: western, which were guaranteed by the Locarno Treaties, and eastern borders of Germany with Poland, which were open for revision.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Poincaré</span> President of France from 1913 to 1920

Raymond Nicolas Landry Poincaré was a French statesman who served as President of France from 1913 to 1920, and three times as Prime Minister of France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War reparations</span> Compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other

War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dawes Plan</span> 1924 plan to resolve Germanys World War I reparations

The Dawes Plan was a plan in 1924 that successfully resolved the issue of World War I reparations that Germany had to pay. It ended a crisis in European diplomacy following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles.

<i>Wirtschaftswunder</i> Post-World War II rapid reconstruction of West Germany and Austria

The Wirtschaftswunder, also known as the Miracle on the Rhine, was the rapid reconstruction and development of the economies of West Germany and Austria after World War II. The expression referring to this phenomenon was first used by The Times in 1950.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles</span> Opening article of the reparations section of the Treaty of Versailles

Article 231, often known as the War Guilt Clause, was the opening article of the reparations section of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War between the German Empire and the Allied and Associated Powers. The article did not use the word "guilt" but it served as a legal basis to compel Germany to pay reparations for the war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupation of the Ruhr</span> 1923–1925 French and Belgian occupation of part of Germany

The Occupation of the Ruhr was a period of military occupation of the Ruhr region of Germany by France and Belgium between 11 January 1923 and 25 August 1925.

<i>The Economic Consequences of the Peace</i> 1919 book by John Maynard Keynes

The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) is a book written and published by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. After the First World War, Keynes attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as a delegate of the British Treasury. In his book, he argued for a much more generous peace, not out of a desire for justice or fairness – these are aspects of the peace that Keynes does not deal with – but for the sake of the economic well-being of all of Europe, including the Allied Powers, which the Treaty of Versailles and its associated treaties would prevent.

A Carthaginian peace is the imposition of a very brutal "peace" intended to permanently cripple the losing side. The term derives from the peace terms imposed on the Carthaginian Empire by the Roman Republic following the Punic Wars. After the Second Punic War, Carthage lost all its colonies, was forced to demilitarize, paid a constant tribute to Rome and was barred from waging war without Rome's permission. At the end of the Third Punic War, the Romans systematically burned Carthage to the ground and enslaved its population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genoa Conference (1922)</span>

The Genoa Economic and Financial Conference was a formal conclave of 34 nations held in Genoa, Italy, from 10 April to 19 May 1922 that was planned by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George to resolve the major economic and political issues facing Europe and to deal with the pariah states of Germany and Russia, both of which had been excluded from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The conference was particularly interested in developing a strategy to rebuild a defeated Germany, as well as Central and Eastern European states, and to negotiate a relationship between European capitalist economies and the new Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia. However, Russia and Germany signed the separate Treaty of Rapallo (1922), and the result at Genoa was a fiasco with few positive results. However, the conference came up with a proposal for resuming the gold standard that was largely put in place by major countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Melchior</span>

Carl Melchior was born in Hamburg. Melchior studied law and eventually was appointed a judge, and later became a German banker and vice-president of the Bank for International Settlements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Rappard</span> Swiss (American-born) academic and diplomat (1883–1958)

William Emmanuel Rappard was a Swiss academic and diplomat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economic history of Germany</span> Aspect of history

Until the early 19th century, Germany, a federation of numerous states of varying size and development, retained its pre-industrial character, where trade centered around a number of free cities. After the extensive development of the railway network during the 1840s, rapid economic growth and modernisation sparked the process of industrialization. The largest economy in Europe by 1900, Germany had established a primary position in several key sectors, like the chemical industry and steel production. High production capacity, permanent competitiveness and subsequent protectionist policies fought out with the US and Britain were essential characteristics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">London Agreement on German External Debts</span> 1953 debt relief treaty

The London Agreement on German External Debts, also known as the London Debt Agreement, was a debt relief treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and creditor nations. The Agreement was signed in London on February 27, 1953, and came into force on September 16, 1953.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic</span> Occurrence of hyperinflation in early 20th century Germany

Hyperinflation affected the German Papiermark, the currency of the Weimar Republic, between 1921 and 1923, primarily in 1923. It caused considerable internal political instability in the country, the occupation of the Ruhr by France and Belgium, and misery for the general populace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heavenly Twins (Sumner and Cunliffe)</span>

The Heavenly Twins was the name assigned to two British delegates, the Judge Lord Sumner and the Banker Lord Cunliffe, during the 1919 Treaty of Versailles negotiations who were to set the terms of the peace to be imposed on Germany following the end of World War I. The two lords, together with the Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes, were responsible for presenting the British and British Dominions' case concerning the amount of compensatory payments, or war reparations, that were to be extracted from Germany.

After World War II both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947. Austria was not included in any of these treaties.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.