ABSTRACT
Over the course of the twentieth century, a series of severe shocks has gravely affected Europe's economic, political and social structures. The two world wars had profound economic consequences, whereas the unfolding of events since 1989 has given rise to comparable dislocation. On each occasion - during the early 1920s, the late 1940s and now in the 1990s - reconstruction has proven to be a daunting task,1 of which one consequence has been that the financial 'expert' has played a role as significant as that of the politician. This contribution will concentrate solely on the reactions to the first of these shocks and will be further confined - to considering the attempts to rebuild eastern Europe over the first half of the 1920s through focusing on the international activities of central bankers, who at that time represented a new cadre of experts. In the aftermath of the war, led by Montagu Norman, they first attempted to define the role of the institutions that they served and then tried to put their ideas into practice in order to rebuild the financial structures of central and eastern Europe.
