ABSTRACT
Throughout the period from 1945 to 1950 the Attlee government worked for the establishment of a world economy in which full employment could be reconciled with multilateral trade. But Anglo-American attempts at the restoration of multilateral trade after 1945 were bedevilled by the dollar shortage. The first attempt broke down in the 1947 convertibility crisis, which revealed a basic connection between the health of the British economy and the viability of the sterling area. The second attempt was centred on the Marshall Plan, which aimed to construct an integrated Europe of which Britain would be the leader. Most histories of post-war European integration, and of British policy towards it, are characterized by two basic assumptions. First, the Marshall Plan not only saved Western Europe from political and economic ruin after 1947 by helping it to overcome the dollar shortage, but created the conditions for international expansion. Secondly, the British held aloof from the development of an integrated Europe out of an antiquated determination to play an imperial role in the post-war world.1
