A Review of the New Literature on Banking History

The book “Der gebremste Wohlstand. Wiederaufbau, Wachstum, Strukturwandel 1945–1980”1 by the Belgian economic historian Herman van der Wee appeared in 1984 as the sixth volume in the series “Geschichte der Weltwirtschaft im 20. Jahrhundert” (edited by Wolfram Fischer). The first part of the book is concerned with the growth of the world economy after the Second World War. In the second section the emphasis is placed on the institutional background to this growth. For the bank historian the chapters dealing with the gold dollar standard as the international monetary system (1944–1971) and the organisation of a new monetary system in 1971 in the second part of the book are of special interest.