This book repositions the groundbreaking Bretton Woods conference of July 1944 as the first large-scale multilateral North-South dialogue on global financial governance. It moves beyond the usual focus on Anglo-American interests by highlighting the influence of delegations from Latin America, India, the Soviet Union, France, and others. It also investigates how state and private interests intermingled, collided, and compromised during the negotiations on the way to a set of regulations and institutions that still partly frame global economic governance in the early twenty-first century. Together, these essays lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive analysis of Bretton Woods as a pivotal site of multilateralism in international history.

Presents the first truly global history of the Bretton Woods conference

1. Introduction.- I. Bretton Woods: A Global Perspective.- 2. What's Been Missing from Conventional Histories of Bretton Woods?.- 3. Prelude to the Future: The Antecedents of the Bretton Woods Architecture.- II. Multinational Perspectives: Europe.- 4. The Benelux's Monetary Diplomacy and the Bretton Woods Conference.- 5. French Monetary Policy and the Bretton Woods System: Criticisms, Proposals and Conflicts.- 6. The Soviet Union and the Bretton Woods Conference.- III. Multinational Perspectives: Asia and the Americas.- 7. "Asia" at Bretton Woods: India, China, and Australasia in Comparative Perspective.- 8. Assessing the 'Multilateral' Nature of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference: An Analysis of Indian Participation.- 9. Voice and Vote for the Weaker Nations: Mexico's Bretton Woods.- 10. Canada and Bretton Woods.- 11. Beyen at Bretton Woods: "...much more significant under the surface...".- 12. Dean Acheson, Bretton Woods and the American Role in the International Economy.- 13. "New Lanes in Uncharted Seas": The Federal Reserve and Bretton Woods.- V. The Trade Follow-Up: The ITO and the GATT.- 14. The Man Who Wasn't There: Cordell Hull, Bretton Woods and the Creation of the GATT.- 15. Where Was Trade at Bretton Woods?.- 16. Bretton Woods, the International Trade Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization.