Étienne Mantoux
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Étienne Mantoux (5 February, 1913 – 29 April, 1945) was a French economist and son of Paul Mantoux. He is probably best well known for his book The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes published two years after it was completed and one year after his death. In it, he sought to demonstrate that much of John Maynard Keynes' beliefs about the consequences for Germany of the Treaty of Versailles as expressed in The Economic Consequences of the Peace were wrong.
In opposition to Keynes he held that justice demanded that Germany should pay for the whole damage caused by the war, and he set out to prove that many of Keynes' forecasts were not verified by subsequent events. For example, Keynes believed European output in iron would decrease but by 1929 iron output in Europe was up 10% from the 1913 figure. Keynes predicted that German iron and steel output would decrease but by 1927 steel output increased by 30% and iron output increased by 38% from 1913 (within the pre-war borders). Keynes also argued that German coal mining efficiency would decrease but labour efficiency by 1929 had increased on the 1913 figure by 30%. Keynes contended that Germany would be unable to export coal immediately after the Treaty but German net coal exports were 15 million tons within a year and by 1926 the tonnage exported reached 35 million. He also put forward the claim that German national savings in the years after the Treaty would be less than 2 billion marks: however in 1925 the German national savings figure was estimated at 6.4 billion marks and in 1927 7.6 billion marks. Keynes also believed that Germany would be unable to pay the 2 billion marks-plus in reparations for the next 30 years, but Mantoux contends that German rearmament spending was seven times as much as that figure in each year between 1933 and 1939.
Mantoux was killed in action eight days before Germany unconditionally surrendered on 7th May 1945 whilst fighting with the Free French Forces in Bavaria.
[edit] Works
- "La Théorie générale de M. Keynes" par Etienne Mantoux, Revue d’économie politique, vol. 51, no 6, novembre-décembre 1937, pp. 1559-1590. Paris: Librairie Sirey, 1937.
- The Carthaginian Peace, The Economic Consequences of Mr Keynes, Oxford University Press, 1946, xvii+210pp. (written in English)
[edit] References
- Conduct of War (1789-1961): A Study of the French, Industrial, Russian Revolutions on War and its Conduct (1961) Major General J. F. C. Fuller (reprint 1962) Rutgers University Press pp. 222, 223
