Money doctors between the wars: the competition between central banks, private financial advisers, and multilateral agencies, 1919–39 STEPHEN A . SCHUKER

World War I produced a caesura in the history of international finance. The previous half-century had witnessed rapid industrialization in the world’s leading nations, the rise of managerial capitalism, and the development of financial intermediaries capable of coordinating domestic economies and lending abroad on a large scale.1 Contemporaries, especially those who had not examined adjustment mechanisms closely, attributed the smooth working of international exchanges to spreading acceptance of the classical gold standard (see, for example, Kemmerer 1944).