Rules of engagement

Between the two world wars, an Atlantic elite of economists, financiers and policy-makers, working in study groups at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, anticipated many of the themes and institutional mechanisms which contributed to international financial stability from 1950 to 1973. In the special atmosphere of Chatham House, ideas were freely expressed, exchanged and developed. Later events, especially the design of a new international financial system at Bretton Woods in 1944, were influenced by some of those ideas. The spirit and goals of the study groups, reflected in the hitherto unexamined documentary records, also have important lessons for the current debate on the international monetary system.