Extract

THIS is a highly original and thought-provoking book. Patrick Cohrs, adopting a systemic approach to his subject, argues that the Anglo-American agreements of 1923–5 laid the foundations for a stable peace in Europe and inaugurated an American-dominated Euro-Atlantic system that lasted until it was disrupted by the unprecedented world depression. By working together to re-integrate Germany into western Europe, Charles Evans Hughes and Ramsay MacDonald created the conditions for the first real post-war peace settlement and made possible the politically essential Locarno pact. Austen Chamberlain's concert of Europe was almost exclusively European but, without Dawes and London and American backing, the Locarno arrangements could not have been concluded. Cohrs argues that the partnership between the two hegemons, based on American financial and economic power and Britain's political influence, established the rules for a new order in Europe and fashioned a fledgeling transatlantic peace system dominated by the United States. The Young Plan and the Hague settlements were the last ‘great bargains’ extending this nascent Pax Anglo-Americana before its collapse in the face of the Great Depression.

You do not currently have access to this article.