16th SCEME Seminar in Economic Methodology Joint with the Post Keynesian Economics Study Group and Brighton Business School
'A Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes': Reappraising Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace
12 -13 September, 2012
Tilton House, UK
Almost a century ago, the Treaty of Versailles marked a new departure in international relations by instituting the League of Nations as the first intergovernmental body explicitly dedicated to peace and stability. At the same time, the Treaty has remained one of the most controversial intergovernmental agreements in history. Keynes, as the principal representative of the British Treasury at the negotiations, famously resigned from the delegation, retiring to Cambridge to write arguably the most eloquent contemporary critique of the Treaty. The Economic Consequences of the Peace became a best-seller virtually overnight and remains a lynch pin in the secondary literature on the significance of Versailles in the build-up to the Second World War. Equally, Keynes's Consequences have remained a powerful testament to his idiosyncratic prose and its influence.
The two-day seminar (Wednesday afternoon to Thursday evening) will take place in Tilton House, Keynes's former country home, and Charleston Farmhouse, country residence of the Bloomsbury circle where Keynes wrote the Consequences.
Watch videos of Tobias Vogelgsang and Michael Ambrosi.
