The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945-51

The hardcover edition of The Reconstruction of Western Europe 1945-51 was hailed by reviewers as a landmark study. Based on exhaustive research, it analyses Europe's reconstruction after the war and the origins of the Great Boom. Alan Milward overturns widely held views about the nature and effects of Marshall Aid, the OEEC, the European Payments Union, the Schuman Plan and Bretton Woods. He challenges the Marshall Plan, for example, in a sustained comparison between the professed objectives of policy and the underlying realities of both policy and economic results, which has fundamental implpications for our diplomatic, economic and political understanding of the period.

Fir this paperback edition Alan Milward has corrected the text and updated the bibliography. It sets new standards for the interpretation of the immediate post-war years and is essential reading for students of modern European history and politics.

Some review of the hardback edition:

'Alan S. Milward is widely -and justly- regarded as one of the half-dozen leading economic historian of our time. To the long list of his earlier works of distinction he has now added one that is rather more contentious, though no less scholarly.'
The Times Literary Supplement

'The book is undoubtedly a major work of scholarship that is bound to exercise great influence on all future work on the period.'
Economic History Review

'Overturns many achieved ideas about the political and economic policies and activities of the Western European nation states in the postwar period, and it does so on the basis of wide research in several languages and in many national archives … a magisterial treatment of the subject. It cannot be too highly recommended.'
Political Quarterly