Robert Triffin’s analysis of the role of sterling in the international monetary system

Robert Triffin was one of the main protagonists in the international monetary debates in the post-war period. He became famous with his book Gold and the Dollar Crisis, published in 1960, in which he predicted the end of the Bretton Woods system. In his analysis there, Triffin was very much marked by the 1931 sterling devaluation and the breakdown of the gold exchange standard. In his view, the growth of foreign exchange reserves after World War Two, primarily dollar and sterling, repeated, but on a much larger scale, their similar expansion after the First World War. This paper focuses on Triffin’s analysis of the role of sterling in the international monetary system, from his early articles on the 1935 Belgian franc devaluation to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. The paper does not only go into Triffin’s famous books (Europe and the Money Muddle and Gold and the Dollar Crisis), but also into lesser-known episodes, such as his involvement, especially via Jean Monnet’s Action Committee for the United States of Europe, in the negotiations of the British accession to the European Economic Community, based on new archival research.