A Golden Combination: The Formation of Monetary Policy in Sweden after World War I

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 556-579
Author(s):  
MARTIN ERIKSSON

From a European perspective, what sets apart the Swedish return to the gold standard at prewar parity in 1924 is not only that it occurred before that of every other nation, including the United Kingdom, but also that it could be made by politicians without interference from the central bank. Against this background, it is argued that this decision may be related to the combined impact of two political positions that affected policy making in a crucial way. In a domestic policy context in which minority governments needed support from other parties to realize their political ambitions, the Social Democrats and Conservatives both developed separate positions in favor of an early return of the gold standard during the first part of the 1920s. Because these parties together formed a majority in both chambers of Parliament, a stable political support for a return of the gold standard could thereby emerge.

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens-Uwe Guettel

In his seminalThe German Empire, published in German in 1973, historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler posited that in respect to the German Empire's colonial policies only the SPD, unlike all other political parties, “retained its capacity to take a critical view on matters of principle.” Moreover, in Wehler's view, the SPD's critical stance on this and many other political questions along with the party's massive electoral gains in the 1912 parliamentary elections precipitated a situation in the years immediately preceding the Great War that prompted the German Empire's “old elites” to bet increasingly on a major military conflict to solve the Empire's internal political tensions (“leap into darkness”). Thus in Wehler's view the Social Democrats contributed in no small part to Imperial Germany's perceived domestic crisis, which prompted the infamous “old elites” to choose war over domestic reform in 1914.


1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-69
Author(s):  
Eric D. Weitz

In the reichstag election of June 1920, Germany’s Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) more than doubled its 1919 vote, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) declined precipitously. Coming only nineteen months after the establishment of a German republic, the election indicated widespread discontent with the governments led by the Social Democrats, who had assumed power in November 1918. In Essen, located in the center of the Ruhr and dominated by coal mines and the giant Krupp works, the SPD was almost eliminated as a political force (Essen, Amt für Statistik und Wahlen, n.d.).


Author(s):  
Jonathan Dickens

Clement Attlee was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, leading his Labour government on a radical program of postwar reconstruction. Attlee himself came from a privileged background, and the decisive influences that brought him to left-wing politics came from his time working with children and families in the East End of London, in the years before World War I. His book The Social Worker, published in 1920, drew on these experiences.


Author(s):  
Gábor Gángó

The abortive or briefly successful Central European revolutions after World War I have mostly been perceived as efforts to export Bolshevism beyond Russia´s borders. This is particularly misleading in regard to the Hungarian revolution, a much more complex phenomenon than has commonly been assumed. This chapter analyzes the events of 1918-1919 in detail and shows that there was no ready-made model that could be transferred from Russia to Hungary. Moreover, the role of the Social Democrats in the revolution was far too important for it to be labelled a Bolshevik one, and the revolutionary government had to deal with specific problems concerning the survival and retrenchment of the Hungarian state after the downfall of the Habsburg monarchy. The last section briefly analyses one of the most significant twentieth-century works on Marxist theory, Lukács‘s History and Class Consciousness, written as a postscript to the Hungarian revolution.


2008 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 157-175
Author(s):  
Robert von Dassanowsky

Political developments between 1933 and 1934 placed Austrian cinema under more governmental control than at any time since World War I. In 1934 the new chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, attempted to counter a looming civil war and the growing power of the Austrian National Socialists by disbanding the embattled parliament and instituting a nonparty clerico-authoritarian corporate state, often referred to as Austrofascist. Although Dollfuss's Fatherland Front was intended to be a national unity movement above party politics, it was, in fact, led by the conservative, Catholic-oriented Christian Social Party. Subsequent laws, which outlawed all political parties, may have temporarily silenced the National Socialists, but they also alienated a substantial portion of Austria's electorate that had supported the Social Democrats.


Belleten ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 76 (276) ◽  
pp. 631-646
Author(s):  
Bülent Özdemi̇r

In the 20th century Assyrians living in Diaspora have increased their search of identity because of the social and political conditions of their present countries. In doing so, they utilize the history by picking up certain events which are still kept fresh in the collective memory of the Assyrian society. World War I, which caused a large segment of the Assyrians to emigrate from the Middle East, has been considered as the milestone event of their history. They preferred to use and evaluate the circumstances during WW I in terms of a genocidal attack of the Ottomans against their nation. This political definition dwarfs the promises which were not kept given by their Western allies during the war for an independent Assyrian state. The aspects of Assyrian civilization existed thousands of years ago as one of the real pillars of their identity suffer from the artificially developed political unification around the aspects of their doom in WWI presented as a genocidal case. Additionally, this plays an efficient role in removal of existing religious and sectarian differences for centuries among Assyrians. This paper aims at showing in the framework of primary sources how Assyrian genocidal claims are being used pragmatically in the formation of national consciousness in a very effective way. Not the Assyrian civilization but their constructed history in WWI is used for the formation of their nation definition.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Campbell ◽  
Solomon Afework

This paper explores key aspects of the immigrant experience of 50,000-plus Ethiopians and Eritreans who live in the United Kingdom. We seek to understand the extent to which immigrant life in the UK has acted ‘as a kind of pivot’ between integrating in their country of settlement and enduring forms of connection with their country of origin. This question is explored by an examination of immigrant organising in the UK – in Refugee Community Organisations – and through interviews about their life in the UK and evolving ideas about self-identity. We argue for an open-ended approach to understand immigrants which sidesteps assumptions about forms of collective identity and which asks how the social and policy context has affected immigrant settlement and integration in the UK.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 324
Author(s):  
Zheming Zhang

<p>With the continuous development and evolution of the United States, especially the economic center shift after World War II, the United States become the economic hegemon instead of the UK and thus it seized the economic initiative of the world. After the World War I, the European countries gradually withdraw from the gold standard. In order to stabilize the world economy development and the international economic order, the United States prepared to build the economic system related with its own interests so as to force the UK to return to the gold standard. The game between the United States and the UK shows the significance of economic initiative. Among them, the outcome of the two countries in the fight of the financial system also demonstrates a significant change in the world economic system.</p>


Author(s):  
Alexander Naumov

This article reviews the role of Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 in escalation of crisis trends of the Versailles system. Leaning on the British Russian archival documents, which recently became available for the researchers, the author analyzes the reasons and consequences of conclusion of this agreement between the key European democratic power and Nazi Reich. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the moods within the political elite of the United Kingdom. It is proven that the agreement became a significant milestone in escalation of crisis trends in the Versailles model of international relations. It played a substantial role in establishment of the British appeasement policy with regards to revanchist powers in the interbellum; policy that objectively led to disintegration of the created in 1919 systemic mechanism, and thus, the beginning of the World War II. The novelty of this work is substantiated by articulation of the problem. This article is first within the Russian and foreign historiography to analyze execution of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement based on the previously unavailable archival materials. The conclusion is made that this agreement played a crucial role in the process of disintegration of interbellum system of international relations. Having officially sanctioned the violation of the articles of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 by Germany, Great Britain psychologically reconciled to the potential revenge of Germany, which found reflection in the infamous appeasement policy. This launched the mechanism for disruption of status quo that was established after the World War I in Europe. This resulted in collapse of the architecture of international security in the key region of the world, rapid deterioration of relations between the countries, and a new world conflict.


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