The alternative Bretton Woods : the 1944 International Business Conference in Rye and the postwar international economic order

Abstract

The official economic discussions that preceded the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference have been the subject of numerous studies, which tend to overlook the contribution of non-state actors, particularly bankers, industrialists and traders. This historiographic neglect is surprising given that three months after Bretton Woods, almost four hundred businessmen from fifty-two countries gathered in Rye, a small town near New York. This working paper examines the ‘International Business Conference’, held from 10 to 18 November 1944 and sponsored by the four main business organizations of the United States. If the Rye Conference reflected the economic and political dominance of the United States, it also revealed the actual diversity of business actors’ approaches to economic planning and anticipating the postwar trajectories of what we might now refer to as “global capitalism”. The diverse postwar world economic orders imagined by businessmen at Rye were crossed by national, supra-regional and imperial tensions. The fault lines evident from their debates both foreshadowed the failure of the International Trade Organization and foretold the multiple challenges to colonial supremacy that would gain momentum over the next few decades.