page_title: International monetary systems
section_title: Between the World Wars: 1919–1939
hierarchical_section_title: International monetary systems / History of modern global monetary orders / Between the World Wars: 1919–1939
caption_attribution_description: العربية: تُظهر الصُورة فلورنسا طومسون مع عدد من أطفالها، وتعرف الصُورة باسم "الأم المُهاجرة" (Migrant Mother)، نظراً لأنَّ فلورنسا قد نزحت مع أطفالها السبعة من نيبومو في كاليفورنيا، أثناء فترة الكساد الكبير، والصورة مُلتقطة في مارس 1936. في فترة الكساد الكبير وظفت هيئة الرقابة المالية عدد من المصورين لتوثيق آثار الكساد على سكان أمريكا،فقامت المصورة دوروثي لانج بالتقاط هذه الصورة، حيثُ أصبحت فلورنسا طومسون وأطفالها رمزاً للصمود في مواجهة الشدائد. English: Portrait shows Florence Thompson with several of her children in a photograph known as "Migrant Mother". The Library of Congress caption reads: "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California." In the 1930s, the FSA employed several photographers to document the effects of the Great Depression on the population of America. Many of the photographs can also be seen as propaganda images to support the U.S. government's policy distributing support to the worst affected, poorer areas of the country. Lange's image of a supposed migrant pea picker, Florence Owens Thompson, and her family has become an icon of resilience in the face of adversity. However, it is not universally accepted that Florence Thompson was a migrant pea picker. In the book Photographing Farmworkers in California (Stanford University Press, 2004), author Richard Steven Street asserts that some scholars believe Lange's description of the print was "either vague or demonstrably inaccurate" and that Thompson was not a farmworker, but a Dust Bowl migrant. Nevertheless, if she was a "Dust Bowl migrant", she would have left a farm as most potential Dust Bowl migrants typically did and then began her life as such. Thus any potential inaccuracy is virtually irrelevant. The child to the viewer's right was Thompson's daughter, Katherine (later Katherine McIntosh), 4 years old (Leonard, Tom, "Woman whose plight defined Great Depression warns tragedy will happen again ", article, The Daily Telegraph, December 4, 2008) Lange took this photograph with a Graflex camera on large format (4"x5") negative film.[1] Español: Madre migrante, foto de Dorothea Lange, muestra a los desposeídos cosechadores de California, centrándose en Florence Owens Thompson, de 32 años, madre de 7 hijos, en Nipomo, California (marzo de 1936). Français&#160;: Portrait de Florence Owens Thompson avec plusieurs de ses enfants connu sous le titre Migrant Mother (Mère migrante), et prise par Dorothea Lange en Californie (États-Unis), en 1936. La légende originale était "Ramasseurs de pois ruinés en Californie. Mère de sept enfants, âgée de 32 ans." Selon des études ultérieures cette femme n'était pas ramasseuse de pois, mais une fermière fuyant le Dust Bowl. Elle fait partie d'une série de photographies commandées par la Farm Security Administration pour convaincre le peuple américain de la nécessité de réformes du New Deal suite à la Grande Dépression de 1929 aux États-Unis Italiano: Foto intitolata Migrant Mother, scattata da Dorothea Lange nel 1936 in California, che inquadra Florence Thompson con alcuni dei suoi sette figli, uno dei simboli della depressione economica statunitense negli anni '30. Português: Migrant Mother, Dorothea Lange, Estados Unidos, 1936 עברית: תמונה זו מכונה "אם נודדת" ובה נראית פלורנס אוונס תומפסון (Florence Owens Thompson;‏ 1903–1983), כשעל כתפיה שעונות שתי בנות והיא אוחזת בחיקה תינוקת. בטקסט המתאר את התמונה בספרית הקונגרס נכתב כך: "קוטפי אפונה נואשים בקליפורניה. אם לשבעה ילדים. בת שלושים ושתים." בשנות ה-30 של המאה ה-20 שרות הרווחה של הממשל הפדרלי בארה"ב העסיק כמה צלמים כדי לתעד את השפעת המשבר הגדול על התושבים. רבים מהצילומים מתקופה זו יכולים להיחשב גם כמעין תעמולה של הממשל, שתמך באוכלוסיה שנפגעה ביותר מהמשבר, באזורים העניים ביותר בארה"ב. הצלמת היא דורותי לנג. התמונה הפכה לסמל של יכולת העמידה האנושית נוכח המשבר הקשה. Русский: Семья сборщиков гороха в период кризиса. Фото Доротеи Ланге.
context_page_description: An international monetary system is a set of internationally agreed rules, conventions and supporting institutions that facilitate international trade, cross border investment and generally the reallocation of capital between nation states. It should provide means of payment acceptable to buyers and sellers of different nationalities, including deferred payment. To operate successfully, it needs to inspire confidence, to provide sufficient liquidity for fluctuating levels of trade, and to provide means by which global imbalances can be corrected. The system can grow organically as the collective result of numerous individual agreements between international economic factors spread over several decades. Alternatively, it can arise from a single architectural vision, as happened at Bretton Woods in 1944.
context_section_description: The years between the world wars have been described as a period of "de-globalisation", as both international trade and capital flows shrank compared to the period before World War I. During World War I, countries had abandoned the gold standard. Except for the United States, they later returned to it only briefly. By the early 1930s, the prevailing order was essentially a fragmented system of floating exchange rates.
  In this era, the experience of Great Britain and others was that the gold standard ran counter to the need to retain domestic policy autonomy. To protect their reserves of gold, countries would sometimes need to raise interest rates and generally follow a deflationary policy. The greatest need for this could arise in a downturn, just when leaders would have preferred to lower rates to encourage growth. Economist Nicholas Davenport
  
  had even argued that the wish to return Britain to the gold standard "sprang from a sadistic desire by the Bankers to inflict pain on the British working class".
  By the end of World War I, Great Britain was heavily indebted to the United States, allowing the US to largely displace it as the world's foremost financial power. The United States, however, was reluctant to assume Great Britain's leadership role, partly due to isolationist influences and a focus on domestic concerns. In contrast to Great Britain in the previous era, capital exports from the US were not countercyclical. They expanded rapidly with the United States' economic growth in the 1920s until 1928, but then almost completely halted as the US economy began slowing in that year. As the Great Depression intensified in 1930, financial institutions were hit hard along with trade; in 1930 alone, 1345 US banks collapsed.
   
  During the 1930s, the United States raised trade barriers, refused to act as an international lender of last resort, and refused calls to cancel war debts, all of which further aggravated economic hardship for other countries. According to economist John Maynard Keynes, another factor contributing to the turbulent economic performance of this era was the insistence of French premier Clemenceau that Germany pay war reparations at too high a level, which Keynes described in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
caption: This era saw periods of worldwide economic hardship. The image is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depiction of destitute pea-pickers in California, taken in March 1936.
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