THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN DOLLAR AND THE RESISTANCE OF THE POUND STERLING

A POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC STRUGGLE

Abstract

At the end of World War II, the United States negotiated a new monetary system and were able to set its national currency as the international reference standard. Since then, the dollar has remained the most important money of account, means of payment and reserve currency in the world. This study aims to investigate, in the context of the First and Second World Wars, the role of political and diplomatic instruments for the determination of the bases that have ensured the primacy of the dollar in the international system, on the one side; and the strategy of British resistance in defense of the pound sterling, on the other. The author opposes the conventional view which emphasizes the weight of the choices of market participants and the public authorities and presents an expanded reinterpretation of the perspective of cartalmoney in which power appears in the center of the monetary issues as important theoretical dimension. It intends to show that, as it managed to expand through diplomacy and war its power and areas of influence, the United States consolidated an international monetary territory based on its national currency.